When we're first learning to make music, most of us don't worry about an A.I. stealing our flow. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But when Jay-Z heard himself on the internet spitting iambic pentameter -- Hamlet's "To Be, or Not to Be" soliloquy, to be exact -- "flattered" is hardly the word for how he responded. It was produced by a well-trained computer speech synthesis program using artificial intelligence. An anonymous YouTube artist named Vocal Synthesis has created a library of popular voices mismatched with unexpected famous texts, including George Bush reading "In Da Club" by 50 Cent, Barack Obama reading "Juicy" by Notorious B.I.G, and, yes, Jay-Z reading Hamlet (and Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire").

Jay-Z's company Roc Nation have filed takedown notices against "deepfake" videos that use artificial intelligence to make him rap Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire and Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy. The two aforementioned videos have been removed, though others remain, including one of the rapper taking on the Book of Genesis. Vocal Synthesis said – via a deepfake video using the ersatz voices of Barack Obama and Donald Trump – that they had "no malicious purpose" and were "disappointed that Jay-Z and Roc Nation have decided to bully a small YouTuber in this way". The Guardian has contacted Roc Nation for comment. Deepfake videos have already caused great controversy in political and celebrity circles, with California outlawing them in 2018, and Facebook banning them in January.