K-pop's biggest music label HYBE looks to lift language barrier with AI
K-pop music label that brought the world hit boy group BTS are using artificial intelligence to meld a South Korean singer's voice with those of native speakers in five other languages. The technology enabled HYBE, South Korea's largest music label, to release a track by singer MIDNATT in six languages — Korean, English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese in May.
Some K-pop singers have released songs in English and Japanese in addition to their native Korean, but applying the new technology for a simultaneous six-language release is a global first, according to HYBE, and could pave the way for it to be used by more popular acts. «We would first listen to the reaction, the voice of the fans, then decide what our next steps should be,» said Chung Wooyong, the head of HYBE's interactive media arm in an interview at the company's studio.
Lee Hyun, 40, known as MIDNATT, who speaks only limited English and Chinese in addition to Korean, recorded the song «Masquerade» in each language. Native speakers read out the lyrics, and later the two were seamlessly combined with the help of HYBE's in-house AI music technology, Chung said.
The song is the latest sign of the growing influence of AI in the music industry at a time when the Grammy Awards have introduced new rules for the technology's use and AI-generated mash-ups of songs are flooding social media. «We divided a piece of sound into different components — pronunciation, timbre, pitch and volume,» Chung said.
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