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JTA — The publisher Hachette recently canceled a horror novel, “Shy Girl,” after it was revealed to have been written with the help of AI.
OpenAI shut down its social media app Sora after complaints that users were sharing inflammatory deepfake videos of Michael Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mister Rogers, among others.
In January, the streaming platform Deezer reported that over 60,000 fully AI-generated tracks are being uploaded to its platform every day (although only a fraction actually stream).
And earlier this year, a contestant in Kveller’s Passover Song Parody Contest explained that her son wrote a first draft of their entry using AI, but that she helped polish the result.
OK, one of these stories may not be as dire as the others. But the possibility that AI could also threaten the Passover song parody is not just a tech story and a cultural story, but a deeply Jewish story.
Just when we learned to rhyme “Lady Gaga” with “Had Gadya,” will chatbots undermine a niche that gives amateur songwriters a chance to shine, and offers the average seder-goer an opportunity to skip a particularly verbose section of the haggadah? If OpenAI and Anthropic have their way, will we be deprived of future classics as brilliant as “Take My Bread Away” by Adam Libarkin and Leslie Frie?
I recently investigated the issue, and subjected myself, John Henry-style, to a person-vs.-machine songwriting duel with a chatbot.
But first, a little history. Eddy Portnoy, academic advisor and director of exhibitions at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, traces parodies of the Passover haggadah back to the 13th century. In the years since, the story of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt had been repurposed in pamphlets and in the Yiddish press to lampoon politicians, communists, capitalists, trade unions, management and, occasionally, Judaism itself.
Because it was a popular text with famous set pieces — four questions, 10 plagues, a Santa-like visit from Elijah — the haggadah was ripe for parody. “The vast majority of Jews — from children to the elderly — were at least nominally familiar with the text, a fact that made the gags easy to understand,” Portnoy writes.
Passover is also the rare Jewish holiday where the main ritual is performed at home, inspiring people to add their own twists to the “official” liturgy and rituals.
That spirit of familiarity, creativity and satire evolved into the modern song parody — easily digestible on YouTube and shared on social media. Modern Orthodox boy bands like the Maccabeats and Six13 produce slick videos that have spread beyond the yeshiva and college a cappella crowd. The best of these, like Six13’s “Matza Mia! An ABBA Passover” or the Y-Studs’ “Don’t Stop, We’re Leavin,’” graft insider Passover references onto a hit pop song.
The videos they produce can go viral — at least in the Jewish sense that your mother keeps forwarding them to........