Infinite Bad Guy
November 2020 | By YouTube Music, Google Creative Lab, IYOIYO, Plan8
One Song. Thousands of covers. An infinite music video experiment.
This experiment is no longer active, but you can still learn about it on this page.
Collection:
Tens of thousands of YouTube creators have covered Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy.” These versions are amazing to watch, spanning almost every country, language, and genre. We wondered what would happen if they could all play together.
On November 23rd 2020, to celebrate “Bad Guy” hitting 1 billion views, YouTube Music launched Infinite Bad Guy - a unique AI experiment that used machine learning to bring thousands of Bad Guy covers together, seamlessly aligning them into endless combinations. It was an infinite music video that was different every time you watched it.
Machine learning also sorted and organized the covers into over one hundred different categories like ASL, rubber chicken, wind instruments, and death metal. No matter how different the covers sounded, differing in beat, tempo, and even missing some lyrics, the algorithm was still able to align the songs on beat, into infinite remixes.
The experiment ran for one year and featured over 15,000 fan covers. Every play was unique and watching every combination of the covers would take at least 1.46 x 10^100 years, which is longer than the lifespan of the universe.
Learn more about the project on YouTube’s Official Blog.