Google’s Blob Opera machine learning experiment is the work of David Li and Google’s Arts and Culture team. A four-choir of coloured blobs puts on operatic performances, while an interactive UI allows you to stretch and squeeze an individual blob to alter its pitch and drag it around to create different vowel sounds. No actual words are sung.
The Blob Opera’s voices are provided by Christian Joel (tenor), Frederick Tong (bass), Joanna Gamble (mezzo‑soprano), and Olivia Doutney (soprano, who recorded 16 hours of singing for the project. Those recordings were then fed to a machine learning algorithm that taught itself to appreciate and perform opera. A separate machine learning model training project handled adding harmonies.
If you click on a Christmas tree in the UI of the current version the blobs will sing you one of a number of popular carols. To mis-quote a popular British radio presenter, it’s a thing of beauty in a wicked world. Merry Christmas!
Source: The Verge