It was a classic rap beef. Then Drake revived Tupac with AI and Congress got involved
In late April, Senator Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) began his testimony before a Senate subcommittee hearing by doing something unusual for a stuffy institution like Congress: He played a new song from the rapper Drake.
But it wasn't Drake's rap verse that Tillis felt was important for Congress to hear. Rather it was a verse in the song featuring the voice of the legendary — and long dead — rapper Tupac Shakur.
In a kind of uniquely modern sorcery, the song uses artificial intelligence to resurrect Tupac from the dead and manufacture a completely new — and synthetic — verse delivered in the late rapper's voice. The song, titled "Taylor Made Freestyle," is one in a barrage of brutal diss tracks exchanged between Drake and Kendrick Lamar in a chart-topping rap battle. Kendrick is from California, where Tupac is like a god among rap fans, so weaponizing the West Coast rap legend's voice in the feud had some strategic value for Drake, who is from Toronto.
Drake, apparently, thought it'd be okay to use Tupac's synthetic voice in his song without asking permission from the late rapper's estate. But, soon after the song's release, Tupac's estate demanding that Drake take the song down, which he did. However — given the murky legal landscape regulating AI creations — it's unclear whether Tupac's estate actually has
