Verses

An online space has been created where artists can meet fans at any time by using an ‘AI persona’.

The music-tech company Verses (CEO Lee Sung-wook) said it has launched an interactive service that lets users chat with AI-recreated artists and enjoy features such as viewing artist-curated photos and taking quizzes.

The first featured artist is the rapper Giriboy, and the project is titled ‘Giriboy Mini-Homepage’. The service is presented with a mini-homepage concept that evokes Y2K sensibilities. The musical worldview of Giriboy, known for laid-back candor, is expressed throughout the mini-homepage, and clicking the character allows users to chat with an AI Giriboy trained on the speech patterns he typically uses.

This time, with an advice-counseling concept, when fans share their concerns, they receive replies in a tone that is characteristically frank yet somewhat blunt for Giriboy. Clicking the Giriboy character opens a chat window. In addition, in the ‘studio’ space where the character walks around, users can decorate their own area by using various items.

A puzzle game that reveals previously unreleased photo-shoot images of Giriboy is also available, and while users spend time on the mini-homepage, signature tracks by Giriboy play as background music.

Verses trained its proprietary multimodal AI on the usual conversational patterns and manner of speech of Giriboy. Real Giriboy fans who took part in pre-release testing reacted that, “Even knowing the conversation partner was AI, it still felt as if we were talking directly with Giriboy“.

The agency Standard Friends for Giriboy commented, “It is meaningful that a space has been created where artists and fans can meet comfortably at any time. We hope this becomes a playground-like space for everyone to share memories and communicate with fans.” Verses stated that while the AI persona can reproduce the voice of an artist and sing songs requested by fans, this feature was not included in the current service.

Lee Sung-wook, CEO of Verses, said, “We wanted to expand the space for communication between artists and fans through AI personas,” adding, “We expect that by offering more services to fans, we can also present a new business model to the music industry.”

Founded in 2020, Verses is a domestic AI music innovation company that has developed a generative AI-based multimodal engine and received the CES Innovation Award for four consecutive years through last year.