Microsoft makes Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa rap

Microsoft has used artificial intelligence (AI) to make Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa rap. However, many were outraged by this idea of the tech giant.

Microsoft has unveiled its new AI technology called VASA-1, which can combine a still image and an audio clip to create realistic videos of talking faces. To demonstrate this, Microsoft released a video clip of the Mona Lisa rapping to the song "Paparazzi."

The clip, released as part of the study, published April 16, quickly went viral, with one post containing the video receiving 7.1 million views on X as of Monday morning.

People reacted strongly to the viral video: “Why does this have to exist? I can’t think of anything positive”; “Another day, another terrible AI video”; “It’s wild, whimsical and creepy all at the same time”; "If only da Vinci could witness this."

Microsoft explained that the "out-of-distribution generalization" method demonstrates "the ability to process input photos and audio that are outside the training distribution."

The company highlighted the positive impacts of the new AI technology, such as increasing equality in education, improving accessibility for those with communication problems, and offering companionship or therapeutic support to those who need it.

But it warned that the new technology is not intended to be “misleading or deceptive” and there is a risk that it could be misused.