YouTube did an experiment in combining all fan covers of the Billie Eilish “Bad Guy” video – and IT IS SICK.
Billie Eilish is not a typical 18-year-old pop star. At the age of 13, she made her very first viral hit “Ocean Eyes”. Fast forward to today, she continues to release chart-topping songs including the famous “Bad Guy” which recently hit its 1 billion views mark. With over 35 million video subscribers, YouTube announced that it is one of the most-covered song on the platform.
To celebrate these milestones, the group created an infinite virtual video where thousands of fan cover videos were clipped and looped together to fit the sequence of the song.
When you enter the microsite, the official video of Bad Guy plays, and two other cover videos are shown on each side. It starts with “everything” as the default category, then viewers are given the option to select other categories for more active experience. If you choose “auto play”, the site will do the rest of the work and will randomly organize the next videos to play.
“Infinite Bad Guy brings together music fans and creators from around the world and celebrates the global reach and impact of music on YouTube. From French autoharpists to Japanese rubber chickens, each of the 15,000 “Bad Guy” covers couldn’t be more different. With approximately 10.5 million seconds (and counting) of Billie fan love, every play creates a never-before-seen and can-never-be-seen-again combination of videos performed by her talented fans from around the world,” according to YouTube.
With the use of machine learning, YouTube was able to clip together 1.46 x 10100 covers from dances, lip syncs, acapella to signing and form a flawless sequence.
“To create this experience, Google Creative Lab had to perfectly align the audio from thousands of videos with different tempos, instruments, keys, and styles. Conventional algorithms couldn’t do the trick alone, so we turned to machine learning,” the group mentioned in its blog. “For videos that deviated from the original track — like acoustic or a cappella versions — we built a neural network that could predict matches between covers and the original. With this data, we were able to line up all kinds of different covers, and switch seamlessly between them.”
“In combining all of these elements and more, Infinite Bad Guy was brought to life,” YouTube added.
For seamless experience, the virtual infinite video can be viewed via a microsite.