OVERHEAD

The above header image depicts a copyrighted character whose intellectual property is not mine, do not attempt to copy or sell the artwork.

What the hell is Chum-core?

Exactly what you’d expect from the internet:

1. Advancements in machine learning created ways of synthesising authentic audio of human speech.
2. These developments led to the creation of audio mimicry tools & services, which can swap a voice from one recording with another, while retaining similar tonality and expression.
3. And now SpongeBob motherf*cking Squarepants is the vocalist to Linkin Park.

See? Predictable.

However, within this bizarre and entirely anticipated trend is yet another trend, there’s a bias in which voice is mimicked for what purpose: Patrick sings surprisingly melancholic songs, Squidward reflects over pessimistic melodies, Mr Krabs sings rap & funk for whatever goddamn reason, but… Plankton?

Well, people figured out that Plankton screams a lot in the show, and so, the machine learning databases have a particularly robust understanding of how to convert the screams of rock and grunge music to his voice. In other words, AI Plankton song covers of heavy metal music go unbelievably hard.

And eventually, on the song cover for Three Days Grace’s ‘I Hate Everything About You’, someone posted this comment:

If you’re wondering how I got the value for the cite property, so that it points to an individual comment on YouTube, just click the comment’s timestamp to get its URL (it’ll have an &lc= query inside of it).

And immediately, as the overwhelmingly unanimous replies show, people adored the term “Chum-core”. And, since it’s equal parts descriptive and hilarious, I’m gonna stick with that term as well.

Addendum

As I recently noticed (10/9/2023) the original channel that uploaded the Three Days Grace AI cover, GrubGaming, was terminated at some point for copyright violations.

Shocking, I know.

Unfortunately, that means the original video, and all its comments, are no longer accessible; the #ChumCoreOrDie quote can no longer be viewed. In response, I’ve created a text document containing all the metadata I could find which you can read here.

The text document includes an (as of writing) working Internet Archive link to the original video file. I also have a personal copy of the audio and thumbnail, but not the video since it’s literally just the thumbnail for nearly four minutes, in case the archive link stops working too (which I won’t share for obvious reasons).

Over-analysis

There’s two ways to understand Chum-core to see why people were so captivated: For its objective reality, and its subjective illusion.

Reality

Chum-core is a natural fit for the internet:

1. It features characters from popular media, moreover, it features fictional cartoon characters from the show, SpongeBob Squarepants, which is already well established in meme culture. It also lends itself to creative cover art in some cases.
2. It features music from popular, but otherwise disparate media to the first, where it’s likely people familiar one media are less familiar with the other.
3. It sits within the grey zone of copyright, with it being just transformative enough to stick around long enough to gain attention.
4. It can be intended for humour, as a showcase of machine learning advancements, or as an excuse to listen to the music, with the audience being the ones able to decide which experience(s) they want from the video.
5. And, as an extension of point 4, the level of effort spent making the content ranges from “I clicked one button and waited 15 minutes” to “I tweaked the parameters for hours until it sounded its best, and then I made some custom cover art too”; it has a low barrier to entry, but has enough headroom for creative expression.

All of these points are commonplace hallmarks of popular internet trends of the past, a perfect blend of novelty with nostalgia, so it’s no surprise why Chum-core happened.

Illusion

Plankton’s a villain, he’s narratively designed to lose and to be entertaining despite that, however, if you remove the “losing” part from a villain; if you give them something non-evil to do that they’re good at, the audience may root for them. It also helps that, ya know, he’s a SpongeBob character…

I just… really want to hammer that point.

It also helps that the videos have, incidentally, created the IKEA effect, where consumers place higher value on products they partially created, since both the creators and the audience contribute ideas towards the song covers. And remember, the tooling is widely available, so any person in the audience can be a creator too, meaning the number of parties in control is technically just one: The audience.

There’s an interesting and unfortunate quirk of machine learning song covers that regular song covers don’t have: The singers are both real and fictional. This means “Plankton” doesn’t have a say on the song covers, but his voice actor, Mr. Lawrence, also doesn’t have a say on the song covers (which is worth its own conversation on machine learning databases), which then cements the IKEA effect even further than it already was by still keeping the number of parties involved at one.

Conclusion

• It’s not often a concept is so weird and so specific I feel the need to write about it, and this was fun to write about.
• The legal and ethical dilemma of machine learning isn’t lost on me, it’s an incredibly powerful and terrifying tool and, in the wrong hands, can be used to devastating effect. That said, I didn’t have much issue writing about Chum-core because:
  1. It’s a fairly innocent use of the technology, I don’t believe it’s being used against Mr. Lawrence in anyway that significantly harms his career; these aren’t products directly competing with him within his profession (unlike machine learned art vs artists as an example), and is clearly made for entertainment and not profit.
  2. I’m confident Chum-core will be a short-lived, inconsequential trend which won’t grow into something else; just another funny footnote… hopefully.
• The song covers of TOOL’s ‘The Pot’ and Alice in Chains’ ‘Man in the Box’ are my favourites, with an honourable mention to the song cover of Adele’s Rolling in The Deep for being both the first song cover I discovered and for being the funniest by far (listen to the chorus to hear what I mean).