Czech ice dancers Kateřina Mrášková and Daniel Mrázek made their Olympic debuts on Monday. This is an immense feat that requires a lifetime of dedication and practice. However, this sibling duo used AI music in their rhythm dance program. This doesn’t violate any official rules, but it serves as a depressing symbol of how perfectly cooked we are.
As Mrazek spins his sister in a crazy cartwheel lift-like move that makes her sister look superhuman, one NBC commentator notes in passing, “This first part is AI-generated,” referring to the music. Somehow that confession is even more puzzling than the gravity-defying tricks the brothers performed under the pressure of Olympic ice.
Olympic ice dance competitions are divided into two categories: rhythm dance, in which pairs perform routines based on a specific theme, and free dance. This season’s theme is “1990s Music, Dance Styles, and Feelings.” British ice dance duo Lyla Fear and Lewis Gibson paid homage to the Spice Girls, while American favorites Madison Chock and Evan Bates skated to a medley by Lenny Kravitz.
But for whatever reason, could it be a licensing issue? — Mrášková and Mrázek danced their routine to music that was half AC/DC, half AI. That’s weird. What’s even stranger is that this isn’t the first time the duo has used AI, nor is it the first time this choice has backfired.
According to the International Skating Federation, which oversees competitive ice skating, the music they chose for this season’s rhythm dance is “One Two” by AI (90s-style Bon Jovi) and “Thunderstruck by AC/DC.” The official Olympic website confirms that the duo uses AI-generated music for the rhythm dance portion.
The Czech brothers have faced backlash before for using AI-generated music. At the beginning of the season, they performed a ’90s-inspired song with a routine that began with the cry, “Every night we destroy Mercedes-Benzes!” If this sounds familiar, that’s because the lyrics come directly from the New Radicals’ 90s hit “You Get What You Give” (incidentally, the song has a great music video shot in a Staten Island mall, the very epitome of American suburbia!).
The AI-generated lyrics also include the lines “Wake up, kids/We’ve got a dreaming disease” and “First we run, then we laugh till we cry.” What a coincidence! These lyrics also appear in the song “You Get What You Give” by the New Radicals. AI’s song is also titled “One Two,” but those are the first words…you can probably guess which song it is at this point.
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As journalist Shana Bartels pointed out in November, before the Olympics, the duo changed the song, replacing New Radicals’ lyrics with other AI-generated lyrics that sounded suspiciously like Bon Jovi’s lyrics. For example, “Hands up, light the night on fire” also appears in Bon Jovi’s “Raise Your Hands”…and the voice of the AI’s “vocalist” also sounds a lot like Bon Jovi. (Not to rub salt in the wound, but “Raise Your Hands” isn’t even ’90s!) This was the music the duo danced to at Monday’s Olympics, and before they moved on to AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” it was a real ’90s song written by real people.
It’s unclear what software the team used to generate this music, but it’s an LLM that works as expected. These LLMs are trained using large music libraries, often through legally dubious means. When prompted, LLM generates the statistically most likely response to your input. This is useful when writing code, but it also means that “Bon Jovi-esque” songs are more likely to use actual Bon Jovi lyrics.
Nevertheless, the music industry seems to be at least temporarily obsessed with the idea of a “musician” that isn’t entirely real. Terisha Jones, a 31-year-old from Mississippi, used Suno to set (hopefully real) poems to music under the persona of Zania Monet. Currently, she has a $3 million record contract.
It is unfortunate that the Olympic skating feat of these Czech dancers could be undermined by the discourse surrounding the use of AI music (a discourse to which I actively contribute). But come on! Shouldn’t this sport be creative?
