It was a classic rap beef. Then Drake revived Tupac with AI and Congress got involved : Planet Money : NPR Rapper Tupac Shakur performs at the Regal Theater in Chicago, Illinois in March 1994. Raymond Boyd/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Raymond Boyd/Getty Images Rapper Tupac Shakur performs at the Regal Theater in Chicago, Illinois in March 1994. Raymond Boyd/Getty Images In late April, Senator Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) began his testimony before a Senate subcommittee hearing by doing something unusual for a stuffy institution like Congress: He played a new song from the rapper Drake. But it wasn't Drake's rap verse that Tillis felt was important for Congress to hear. Rather it was a verse in the song featuring the voice of the legendary — and long dead — rapper Tupac Shakur. In a kind of uniquely modern sorcery, the song uses artificial intelligence to resurrect Tupac from the dead and manufacture a completely new — and synthetic — verse delivered in the late rapper's voice. The song, titled "Taylor Made Freestyle," is one in a barrage of brutal diss tracks exchanged between Drake and Kendrick Lamar in a chart-topping rap battle. Kendrick is from California, where Tupac is like a god among rap fans, so weaponizing the West Coast rap legend's voice in the feud had some strategic value for Drake, who is from Toronto. Drake Prince Williams/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Prince Williams/Getty Images Drake Prince Williams/Getty Images Drake, apparently, thought it'd be okay to use Tupac's synthetic voice in his song without asking permission from the late rapper's estate. But, soon after the song's release, Tupac's estate sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding that Drake take the song down, which he did. However — given the murky legal landscape regulating AI creations — it's unclear whether Tupac's estate actually has the law on their side. And so the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar has become not only one of the most brilliant — and most vicious — battles in the history of rap. It's also become a historic flashpoint for the issues posed by what you might call AI necromancy — resurrecting traits of the dead using AI technology. We've entered a new world where anyone can conjure the voice or visual likeness of a dead celebrity — or really anyone, dead or alive — with a few clicks using AI software. And this has opened up a bunch of new legal questions about the rights of people and their heirs to control digital replicas of themselves. "So we've got work to do and legislation addressing the misuse of digital replicas will have a multi-billion dollar implication," said Senator Tillis after playing the new Drake song featuring AI Tupac in Congress. "We've got to get it under control." The Immortal Supply Of Tupac For Tupac, this is just the latest chapter in one of the most productive careers that any artist has had after death. Even before the explosion of artificial intelligence, there was enormous commercial and artistic demand for reviving the late rapper. And there were questions over whether his legacy was being tarnished by his estate cashing in on that demand. Tupac, who is widely recognized as one of the greatest and most charismatic rappers of all time, was murdered back in 1996, in a drive-by shooting on the streets of Las Vegas. Given the incredible mark he left on the world, it's hard to believe he was only 25 years old when he passed. Tupac, who was known to go into the studio and churn out songs like a conveyor belt, left behind a massive supply of unreleased songs. And, under the direction of Tupac's estate, music labels released seven posthumous studio albums of these songs — more than the number of albums Tupac released while he was alive. That doesn't even include the slew of greatest hits albums, live albums, and compilation albums released after he died. By the early 2000s, the constant deluge of new Tupac songs began to strike many people as strange. Was he still alive? Maybe! In 2006, Dave Chapelle released a hilarious sketch on The Chappelle Show that poked fun at this idea. He and a group of clubgoers can be seen dancing to a new Tupac song, which has reference after reference to events that happened well after he died. The crowd is mesmerized — and perplexed — by the song's eerily contemporary lyrics. The sketch was called "Tupac is still alive." While some of the Tupac songs released after he died were actually quite good, most were ones that the artist himself would have probably not released. In this humble Tupac fan's opinion, repeated themes and phrases in these songs became clichés. His flows were often very similar and got a little boring. By 2006, when Tupac's heirs released his final studio album, it felt like they were scraping the bottom of the barrel for a quick buck. Last year, the estate controversially partnered with the company Nixon to launch an entire line of watches inspired by the late rapper. "Through photos, writings, and, of course, his music, we visually designed Tupac's story through the medium of watches," said a Nixon spokesperson in a press release. As Vibe made clear, many of Tupac's fans were not pleased with this partnership. At the heart of the battle over regulating AI-generated digital replicas of dead people is whether their estates should have powers to authorize usage. The idea is that such power will safeguard the artist's legacy and financially benefit their families. But Tupac's story reveals that this is by no means a foolproof solution. Tupac's sister, Sekyiwa Shakur, has alleged her brother's estate has been improperly managed by its executor, Tom Whalley. Whalley was appointed to that job by Afeni Shakur, Tupac's mother, in her will. She died in 2016. Tupac's sister, in a lawsuit filed in 2022, accused Whalley of embezzling money and requested an official audit of the estate. Whalley vigorously denies any wrongdoing. The lawsuit is still pending. While Tupac's story, likeness, and mortal music catalog would clearly continue to be a valuable commodity, by the 2010s, it started to feel like the finality of death had finally caught up with Tupac and stopped the flow of new musical performances. There's only so much someone can do when they've been dead for decades, right? Then, however, came 2012. That's when Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, performing live at Coachella, famously resurrected Tupac with a "hologram" for a performance. To a roaring crowd, Tupac, artificially generated using CGI and projected onto the stage, rose up from out of the ground like a ghost. Ghost Tupac began by performing his bone-chilling posthumously released song, "Hail Mary." The crowd loved every second of it. The Ghost of Tupac (right) appears next to Snoop Dogg (left) at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in 2012 Christopher Polk/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Christopher Polk/Getty Images The Ghost of Tupac (right) appears next to Snoop Dogg (left) at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in 2012 Christopher Polk/Getty Images Funny enough, even Drake's archenemy Kendrick Lamar reanimated Tupac for his own artistic purposes. The last track on Kendrick's 2015 album "To Pimp A Butterfly" is a song titled "Mortal Man." The song ends with Kendrick interviewing Tupac. Kendrick lifted Tupac's side of the interview from a rarely heard Q&A that Tupac did back in 1994 with a Swedish radio show. But, unlike Drake, Kendrick got authorization from Tupac's estate to do this. Is It Legal To Use AI Tupac In Your Song? With the explosion of AI, Tupac — or at least a fake, digitally rendered version of him — is seeing another resurgence. It's not just Drake. YouTube is now filled with songs featuring AI Tupac. Some of these songs already have millions of listens. The question is whether any of this is even legal when the creators lack authorization from Tupac's estate. To get an answer to this, we spoke to Mark Bartholomew, a law professor at The University at Buffalo School of Law. He has a forthcoming law review article titled "A Right To Be Left Dead," which dives deep into the legal issues posed by AI necromancy. [Editor's note: This is an excerpt of Planet Money's newsletter. You can sign up here.] Currently, there are few or no federal laws that explicitly prohibit people from using AI to generate and distribute replicas of you without your consent. Instead, Bartholomew says, there's a confusing patchwork of laws that vary state by state. Some states protect your visual likeness, but not your voice. Others protect you when you're living but not when you're dead. Tennessee, the epicenter of country music, recently became the first state to enact a law protecting musicians from unauthorized AI replicas, safeguarding an artist's likeness and voice, both when they're living and dead. How do we know which state's laws govern? Bartholomew points to a famous case involving the unauthorized use of Marilyn Monroe's persona. The late actress's estate argued that Monroe, at the time of her death, was domiciled in California, which hands generous rights to artists to control commercial use of their personas, including after they're dead. Because of her California ties, Monroe's estate argued, they had rights to authorize — and profit from — the use of her image. However, using evidence like tax records and…
