Opera legend Maria Callas, who died in 1977, will never record a new aria. Or will she?
This past summer, computer scientist professor Guo Yike and the head of the department of music professor Johnny Poon used AI technology and computer programming to create a recording of Mendelssohn’s On Wings of Song in the voice of the late New York soprano. It was so realistic that those who were invited to listen to the recording were fooled. “They said to me, ‘Oh, I didn’t realise Callas recorded this song,’” Poon says with a laugh.
Callas’s “recording” was one by Taiwanese singer songwriter Lo Ta-yu alongside AI-generated choral singing. On the stage was Poon conducting a human orchestra. Lifelike human singing rang in harmony with the orchestral music, but the choir was nowhere to be seen: the “voices” were all synthetically created.
