Beach Boys fan completes abandoned ‘Smile’ album using AI
An AI-generated version of the Beach Boys‘ unfinished album Smile has appeared online. Creator Mike LeRoy fabricated a backstory for his work, explaining that he found the abandoned album in a little-known record store: “In the summer of 2018 I travelled to Japan. I slid a pink record sleeve out of a neatly packed shelf of vinyl records. Looking down at my prize, I was presented with a Native American glancing at the bicycle parked on the shore. The OBI strip simply read: The Beach Boys Smile.”
LeRoy continued: “When the needle hit the disc, I discovered something utterly shocking: a seemingly complete, clean, stereo mix of the Beach Boys’ unreleased opus. Or not! That’s just a story! But after all, in some universe that must be true.”
The album’s creator went on to explain how he used AI to craft vocals in the style of Brian Wilson. “Months and months ago when I began this project, I was pretty sure the community would be morally opposed to AI vocals,” LeRoy wrote. “This had always been a dream of mine, but I wasn’t sure how I felt. When I started to see [another fan’s] work with his AI Brian model, I realized the time had come to unleash it on the world.”
To craft the vocals, LeRoy trained the AI using a recent singing voice conversion model: “I hadn’t used it for Smile much because I wasn’t sure I wanted to,” he confessed. “In hindsight, after the 100 hours I must’ve put into the whole process of getting Brian’s voice out of this machine, it was well worth it. If you turn off your mind and, perhaps, sing along, it really can feel like Brian sang on these. A special feeling I’m blessed to have been a part of making happen.”
Check out LeRoy’s AI-generated version of Smile below.
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