In December, Idles released “Grace” and Uproxx’s Alex Gonzalez wrote of the song, “Over slow-burning drums and downtempo cadence, lead vocalist Joe Talbot makes an appeal to the listener’s emotion by way soft, silky vocals and lyrics.”
The band just put out a new video for the track, and it sure looks like it’s actually Coldplay leader Chris Martin delivering the soft, silky vocals. That’s because Idles made use of deepfake technology to impersonate Martin, and the effect is convincing. That’s partially because Martin himself actually helped make it look as realistic as possible.
A press release explains the story behind the video:
“The concept for the video came to Idles frontman Joe Talbot in a dream. It’s effectively a recreation of Coldplay’s iconic ‘Yellow’ video, but with deepfake AI tech used to give the impression that Chris Martin is instead singing ‘Grace.’
Joe spoke to Chris about the idea shortly after his dream, and the Coldplay frontman not only gave his blessing to make the idea a reality, but also later helped to train the AI to make his vocal performance look more realistic.”
Watch the “Grace” video above.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.