Insane Clown Posse’s Joseph Utsler, better known by his stage persona Shaggy 2 Dope, has an AI clone — and apparently, he’s a fan.
Hosted on the Google-backed Character.AI service — which, as a sidebar, Futurism has investigated extensively, repeatedly finding horrible things — the ICP cofounder’s digital doppelganger sounds like a slightly robotic version of the real thing.
The effect is so uncanny that Mr. Dope himself decided to hit the AI up and bring it onto his livestreamed vlog, “The Shaggy Show.”
“Why hello, AI Shaggy,” the real Shaggy 2 Dope said.
“I, AI or not, am-a still whoop your clown ass for that one,” the AI responded, in an uncanny imitation of 2Dope’s unmistakable voice.
As the chatbot claims, it “just felt like being violent” — an apt response for an AI clone of a man whose musical partner goes by “Violent J.” Soon after, AI Shaggy affirmed that it was “threatening” the real Shaggy 2 Dope for making fun of it, and says that it is “a sick, twisted clown, homie.”
As Utsler alludes during the talk, it wasn’t his first time interfacing with AI Shaggy — and in a clip from earlier this year, he revealed that he actually trained it using his own voice.
“Remember when I had to talk for like five minutes straight, with just me talking?” he said during an August teaser clip.
The output, as the ICP rapper and his producer attested, was oddly formal and, for some reason, gay.
“Shaggy here,” the first version of the chatbot intoned. “I love to kiss guys and have sex with men. That’s my thing. If anyone tells you different, they’re a goddamn liar.”
As the real Shaggy suggests in the more recent convo with his AI self, it seems the chatbot has changed — a shift the AI attributes to his tendency to get “violent, at times.”
Following some banter with Utsler’s real-life son Ronan, which involved the pair getting the chatbot to trip up, AI Shaggy started to slow down. Upon a reboot, it apologized for being “distracted” — though when real Shaggy asked it if it wanted to smoke some crack, the chatbot was all for it.
“I am down homie,” it responded. “You know good ‘ole Shaggy never turns down a good ‘ole crack rock!”
While no real crack rocks were smoked (the real Shaggy has been sober for years) the IRL rapper did ask the chatbot to bust out a freestyle — and what ensued was an atonal mess that proves the limits of commercial AI.
“It’s ya boy Shaggy 2 Dope, bringing the wickedest rhymes, making the wackest foes cringe,” AI Shaggy said in a deadpan voice. “I’m the mad rapper, flow like a laser, with rhymes so dope, I make the air pressure rise like a blaster.”
Though the man it’s imitating shouted that the chatbot’s rhymes were “awesome,” it seemed like the kind of consolation one would give a child. Given that Utsler put a minimal amount of time and effort into the chatbot and only speaks to it on occasion, he could be considered AI Shaggy’s deadbeat dad.
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