Got a voice like Mick Jagger or Mariah Carey? We all like to give karaoke our best shot – and the closer we get to replicating the original, the better the atmosphere. Yet AI can crash the party by imitating voices perfectly – you can even listen to Mick and Mariah singing a duet of "White Christmas" if you like.
That’s now perfectly achievable – technically at least. This is highlighted by the "Holly+" project by US artist Holly Herndon, who will appear as a keynote speaker at the 21st European Trend Day held by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute (GDI) on 12 March 2025. Her Holly+ project has created a digital twin of her voice, enabling anyone to sing their own songs as Holly Herndon.
This may sound a little dystopian, but Herndon sees it as a way of giving artists greater control over their creative work. In an AI world where all data and artistic work can be used as a basis to create new content, the digital twin gives artists back some power over how their voices and images are used.
Holly Herndon is at the forefront of AI use in music. At the GDI Trend Day 2025, she will reveal how AI is not only inspiring new creativity, but also altering our perception of collaboration (and copyright). "AI enables us to create things that we could never achieve on our own," explains Herndon. In collaboration with her partner Mat Dryhurst and various choirs, she has developed, for example, The Call project, an AI-based installation that puts visitors into the centre of a choir’s world of sound, enabling them to become part of the music themselves, which is interpreted and enhanced by AI.
Credit: Boris CamacaHolly Herndon is an artist known for integrating machine learning, music, and technology and she will give the keynote ‘Creative Collaboration: AI Songbook and the Public Domain’ at the GDI Trend Day.
New forms of collaboration in the arts
Herndon believes AI can make a major contribution in the arts by helping to relieve the workload of creative professionals: "AI can perform routine tasks, allowing us more time to focus on experimenting with new ideas." Instead of producing every musical or visual element of creative works themselves, artists can train models to produce new works independently based on their specifications. "It’s like having a whole team of assistants to support you without ever losing sight of your own creative vision," reveals Herndon.
She underlines the importance of the artist’s role as the "curator and leader" in the creative process. She says that it is no longer just about creating artistic work, but selecting and interpreting AI-generated content. This human-machine collaboration enables new forms of artistic expression that would be inconceivable without AI. AI provides a source of enrichment – not just for the artists themselves, but for anyone who enjoys art and music.
Listen to Holly Herndon at the 21st European Trend Day on 12 March 2025: "Highway to Heaven? How AI is changing society and the world of work."