SpongeBob Sings (AI) / Characters Sing

Submission 4,625

Part of a series on SpongeBob SquarePants. [View Related Entries]

About

SpongeBob Sings refers to a series of videos utilizing Uberduck AI, 15.ai and other text-to-speech AI, in which SpongeBob performs various songs with his own voice, often accompanied by an animation of SpongeBob dancing, known as Spongepls. Popularized by the YouTube channel SpongeDubs and a viral "Out of Touch" version, the format eventually developed into a larger trend of video game and cartoon characters singing AI-generated songs.

Origin

On July 18th, 2018, YouTube^[1] channel SpongeDubs uploaded its first video, a music video of SpongeBob SquarePants singing "No Tears Left to Cry" by Ariana Grande created with audio pitch modification tool Melodyne. The video gained over 1.3 million views in four years (shown below).

Spread

In the following years, the channel uploaded nearly 50 videos of SpongeBob performing various songs, created with Melodyne and AI tools. As of September 2nd, 2022, the two most viewed videos^[2]^[3] on the channel "SpongeBob Sings "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X" and "SpongeBob Sings "Bad Buy" by Billie Eilish," had over 24 million views and 7.3 million views, respectively (shown below, left and right).

On July 28th, 2021, Twitter^[4] user @__Frogz posted a video in which SpongeBob sings "Out of Touch" by Hall & Oates, created with Uberduck AI and using Spogepls, an animation of dancing SpongeBob created by 3D artist Trussive in 2019. The post gained over 40,300 views, 1,800 retweets and 5,000 likes in one year, with a YouTube^[5] upload gaining over 250,000 views in the same period. On July 30th, Twitter^[6] gimmick account Spongebob Out Of Touch Thursdays (@ootspongebob) was created, posting the video every Thursday.

In the following months, more SpongeBob Sings videos using Uberduck AI and other AIs, usually accompanied by the animation, were posted. For example, on October 22nd, YouTube^[7] user Leroy1107 posted a Super Idol meme that received over 138,000 views in one year (shown below, left). On November 11th, 2021, YouTube^[8] user Randolex posted a video of SpongeBob singing "Red Sun in the Sky" set over memes about China that gained over 2 million views in ten months (shown below, right).

Starting on April 29th, 2022, YouTuber SuperKek started posting SpongeBob Sings memes. For example, on April 30th, SuperKek uploaded^[9] an "It Has to Be This Way" meme that gained over 1.4 million views (shown below, left).

Following the success of their SpongeBob Sings uploads, SuperKek posted similar videos featuring other characters. For example, on August 21st, 2022, SuperKek uploaded^[10] a video of Donald Duck singing "It Has to Be This Way" that gained over 178,000 views in two weeks (shown below, right).