Liza Minnelli, AI project — Page 2

binau said: "I genuinely can't wait until the technology reaches a stage that we will be a able to hear Judy Garland perform every Broadway musical (think Rose, many of the ladies in Follies, even weird things like Sunday I'd be interested to hear her sing both leads). We will also have Bernadette singing Sweeney etc.

It's a scary future but there will be some good things to come from AI, at least for me."



I can't fathom how you could possibly get any satisfaction out of that.

It's pretty clear Liza is not running her social media and the recent posts/statements on there are really not what we'd expect from her. It's becoming disconcerting.

Jay Lerner-Z said: "binau said: "I genuinely can't wait until the technology reaches a stage that we will be a able to hear Judy Garland perform every Broadway musical (think Rose, many of the ladies in Follies, even weird things like Sunday I'd be interested to hear her sing both leads). We will also have Bernadette singing Sweeney etc.

It's a scary future but there will be some good things to come from AI, at least for me."



I can't fathom how you could possibly get any satisfaction out of that."

I literally can't fathom how you don't have the empathy to understand how I could get satisfaction from it.

Look, AI is scary, it can be trash - Liza's song is trash. But it is here to stay, and it's not going away. And it's going to get better, and better, and better.

Yes, there are ethical issues but you don't really have a choice. You have to accept it.

So many in this thread are clearly ideologically opposed to AI. But it is what it is. You can learn to live with it, you can criticise it, you can complain about it. But you will never, ever be able to ignore it. It's going to be in your workplace, in your home, in our theatres, in our cinemas, in our hospitals, in our art.

It's going to write for us, sing for us, learn for us, teach us, do our work, entertain us, help us, heal us etc. etc. whether you like it or not.

It may also do a lot of bad too - but you don't really have a choice. It's here to stay. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.

You will never, ever be able to ignore it. Good luck.

You can listen to "I don't want to know" from DEAR WORLD over and over again about this strange dystopia we live in now, but it won't matter at all. When you look outside, when you turn on your TV, when you open a book, when you work, when you do anything you will eventually see this technology everywhere and in everything.

I hope to god it doesn't destroy our society.

Updated On: 1/29/26 at 02:23 PM

Are you saying that given an indefinite amount of time that AI will never be able to produce a convincing replication of Judy Garland singing Another Winter in a Summer Town? (Great suggestion by the way I’d love to hear that). Of course it will. I don’t get what you mean haha. And when it can, it might feel a bit icky and uncanny but ultimately my mind will process the timbre of Judy Garland’s voice and enjoy the song when the sound is convincing enough. The same way I can enjoy Debbie W doing her impersonations even if it obviously isn’t the real thing.

binau said: "Are you saying that given an indefinite amount of time that AI will never be able to produce a convincing replication of Judy Garland singing Another Winter in a Summer Town? (Great suggestion by the way I’d love to hear that). Of course it will. I don’t get what you mean haha. And when it can, it might feel a bit icky and uncanny but ultimately my mind will process the timbre of Judy Garland’s voice and enjoy the song when the sound is convincing enough. The same way I can enjoy Debbie W doing her impersonations even if it obviously isn’t the real thing."

Absolutely not because it, again, can only replicate. She died in the 60s. She can't work with a music director. She can't make any decisions for the text. The very BEST they could hope for is making her match Christine Ebersole's cadence because all they'd have to train generative AI on are her incredibly old (and very different genres) and basically Christine Ebersole's performances of the song. It's Frankensteinining it. It's not that it's "icky", it's that it's just literally not her. Not her decisions. Its like saying it'd be able to create a Sondheim score! It could never! It could try and stupid people can be entertained, but he is dead. It's poor digital celebrity impersonation and that's all it can be.

This feels like a Stan Lee situation, I'm very concerned for her.

Merkin2 said: "I think Ai can have Ai Judy Garland sing a song in the style of Judy. There’s clips of her singing somewhere over the rainbow looking forlornly so they can imagine what her singing another winter in a summer town might be like"

...So No?

What about Somewhere Over The Rainbow and Another Winter are even similar? Like I said, simple people are easy to entertain but it's not going make it Judy. A celebrity impersonator can dress up as Cher all they want, it doesn't give them the abilities of Cher. AI literally can't imagine. It can't create. It can only regurgitate. Your mind is a far more powerful tool for imagining what that would look/sound like. Please go use it.

TheatreFan4 said: "It's Frankensteinining it. It's not that it's "icky", it's that it's just literally not her. Not her decisions. Its like saying it'd be able to create a Sondheim score! It could never! It could try and stupid people can be entertained, but he is dead. It's poor digital celebrity impersonation and that's all it can be."

Enough time will pass that the work of Sondheim, Garland, or Ebersole will no longer be front and center (or on "speed dial" in the public's memory. Most people's memory will become "hazy" re: their voices, or their work.

I think John Philip Sousa might be an example of that effect. In his time, his work was extremely popular with the general public. Today, I think most people would have a hard time naming any other of his works beyond, "The Stars and Stripes Forever". I also believe that Andrew Lloyd-Webber can use bits and bobs of Puccini in his work, without it generally being noticed, for the same reason. IMO, if Lloyd-Webber had been born earlier, and had written his work alongside Puccini’s, more people would recognize the similarities immediately.*

Technically, any AI impersonation can be brushed off as being, “in the style of…”. I do believe (as I’ve written before), that there most definitely will be a future where AI will be taken for granted just like our current technologies. Artists’ work that is currently recognized as attributable to a specific artist, may not be so in the future. Giving credit to the AI will be a non-issue unless there is an effort made by people not to be “stupid”. (Fat chance of that happening.)

* PS: Another example:
I can remember when “Hadestown” first opened on Broadway, and there were posts re: Patrick Page’s performance as Hades. No one seemed to see (or be aware of) how strikingly similar his performance was to that of Ken Nordine’s Word Jazz recordings from the mid -late ’50s. When enough time passes, memory fades and can be replaced.

Updated On: 1/30/26 at 11:39 AM

John Adams said: Enough time will pass that the work of Sondheim, Garland, or Ebersole will no longer be front and center (or on "speed dial" in the public's memory. Most people's memory will become "hazy" re: their voices, or their work."



Take it back.

Ai knows what it’s told. It has the entire internet at its disposal with clips and information about Judy Garland and the way she performed. AI can absolutely create a video of Judy garland singing another winter in a summer town. Why do you keep denying this? I don’t see any harm in it, it’s just fun. Nobody here is suggesting it’s capable of human emotion, go listen to what Ben affleck said.

TotallyEffed said: "Take it back."

I know...

Equally saddening is the loss of Catherine O'Hara.

The good news is that digital audio/video will assist in counteracting the natural process.

Updated On: 1/30/26 at 02:19 PM

I kind of agree with you about the ethical issues. To steal someone’s likeness and try and replicate that especially without consent is ethically dubious territory.

But if we are talking about the art, hypothetically if it could produce the likeness in a way that is indistinguishable from the real thing would you still reject it? Ie is it just the principle rather than the outcome?