A new song that appears to have been released by Justin Bieber, with lyrics mentioning being at a “Diddy party”, has gone viral on social media, raising doubts about its authenticity.
It first appeared on social media platforms like TikTok, X and YouTube in April, but has racked up even more views since the arrest of rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs.
The lyrics include: “I got lost at a Diddy party / I didn't know what it would be like / I was looking for a new Ferrari / But it cost me so much more than my soul.”
Another line mentions, “I signed a paper so he never has to apologize.”
A new song that appears to have been released by Justin Bieber contains lyrics like “I got lost at a Diddy party/I didn’t know what it would be like/I was looking for a new Ferrari/But it cost me so much more than my soul.” (Getty Images)
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Representatives for Bieber did not respond to a request for comment on the song, but several experts agree that the song is more than likely created with AI or other digital tools.
AI expert Marva Bailer told Fox News Digital: “The reason this is generated is because it's not something that's being put out there by the artist. And when we say 'AI-generated', it can mean many things. And then AI actually trains the voice and what could be happening. It could be an AI tool, or it could be a real digital tool. These digital music tools exist. quickly and it looks so real, and then everyone thinks, it must be someone who is using something AI to make it look so real.”
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She continued: “Part of the experience of releasing new material is the pre and post part of the digital experience and engagement. So we immediately know that this isn't real if the artist isn't excited about it and hasn't told us about it. We like surprises and you see a lot of gamification to find out what's in the vault, what the new song will be and what the hidden track will be. That’s why fans are saying this isn’t my Justin Bieber.”
“It's very hard to say, but I think the fact that it seemed very objective and current almost seemed like too much of a coincidence that it would appear,” said Rob Rosenberg, founder and principal of Telluride Legal Strategies.
Experts say the song is more than likely AI for a variety of reasons, including Bieber's lack of promotion of it. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
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CBS reported that they ran the song “through several AI audio detection tools; several results indicated that the audio, or at least parts of it, was likely generated by AI.”
On a technical level, experts at Pindrop, a voice authentication and security company that has been heavily involved in the banking industry since 2011 but has recently expanded its technology to detect AI-generated deepfakes, told Fox News Digital that there are certain signals that mark the music as generated by AI.
“The reason this is generated is because it’s not something that’s being put out there by the artist.”
“When we speak, our speech is in a specific frequency range. And what we noticed is that these AI generation systems sound really good, but they don't actually match the way we speak with the exact frequencies as a normal. human being. And so we are able to detect this kind of frequency variability in AI-generated speech,” said Sarosh Shahbuddin, senior director of product at Pindrop.
Elie Khoury, Ph.D., vice president of research, further explained that there are three main categories of these artifacts, including acoustic, phonetic, and temporal inconsistencies, and the “fingerprint” of the model that generated the AI.
Experts at Pindrop, a voice authentication and security company, said there are what are known as “digital artifacts” in Bieber's music that suggest it is not authentic. (Joseph Okpako/WireImage)
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Shahbuddin also pointed out that its own technology is often associated with independent fact-checking to determine whether an image or audio is made with AI.
Pindrop more recently entered the social media space with the Pindrop Pulse tool, and Shahbuddin and Khoury said they are seeing a “massive increase” in the number of people checking deepfakes, with 10,000 “suspicious files” per month uploaded to their site.
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They noted that “the distribution of the media files we label as synthetic versus non-synthetic is quite large and alarming,” thanks in part to publicly available open-source tools for creating deepfakes.
“There is very little that can be done to prevent the use of these models. It’s crazy,” Shahbuddin said.
Pindrop experts said they are seeing a “massive increase” in the number of people checking deepfakes. (ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)
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In addition to the issue of the content featured in the song, there are also the financial implications of continued deepfakes for Bieber and other artists.
“THE [point] of TikTok is, you make your little fun creations, you put in cartoons and talking heads and fun new creations, and people are using that as background music for these new creations. And so it goes on and on. And normally, if it was a licensed song, every time one of those creations played, you would get royalties. And so, in this whole world, nobody gets royalties,” Bailer said.
Bieber did not address the song or the rumors that it was faked by AI. (Mike Rosenthal/Getty Images)
“These social platforms will start to view music-related deepfakes as a very different category of media than political deepfakes or other types of deepfakes,” explained Shahbuddin. “And the reason is that there are record labels and types of organizations that own the licenses to these singers and artists, and that impacts how the royalties are distributed to these artists. So these deepfake singers are actually a new class where there is a significant revenue impact. And I think platforms like YouTube are going to start taking this much more seriously than non-singing or music-related deepfakes.
He added: “Imagine if this person who created this deepfake actually uploaded it as a song on Spotify and then got thousands of streams. This is money going to someone where you know the money doesn’t belong to them.”
“There is very little that can be done to prevent the use of these models. It’s crazy.”
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Even with money at stake, Bailer said Bieber won't bother addressing the deepfake for a few reasons.
“Bieber isn't talking about this because he has millions of followers on Instagram, and he even [reportedly] she gets paid close to $2 million to post on Instagram,” she said. “So if your PR team handled every unauthorized remake of your song, that would be all they would be doing. And by the way, he had a baby three months ago, so he's been busy with his family. He and his PR team don't want to draw unwanted attention to people who are trying to harm his brand. And you could also argue: Are they hurting his brand?”
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Since Combs' arrest and charges, Bieber's past friendship with the disgraced mogul has been under the microscope, along with other celebrities, with fans scrutinizing resurfaced videos of the two interacting.
Bieber began his career in 2009 after signing with Usher, and later interacted with Combs. (Getty Images)
But Rosenberg advises people to be cautious with each new piece of news that emerges as the charges against Combs go to trial.
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“In fact, I think we're going to see a lot more new information coming out, and I think at the same time that that's happening, there will be new misinformation,” he said. “There will be deepfakes, people who will exercise all their creativity and create images and videos and stories, and that's why people are really going to have to scrutinize the things they see and discover to make sure they're not just being tampered with.”
