Hungary official takes on German MEP in AI 'rap battle'

Hungary's prime minister was the target of an unusual rap - prompting his spokesman to respond in kind

It's unlikely to dominate the streaming charts, but Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has become the subject of a unique diss track.

And the man behind the song is no up-and-coming artist or future festival headliner.

It's a member of European Parliament from Germany, Daniel Freund - a fierce critic of Mr Orban.

The lyrics refer to "scams and hustles" and take aim at alleged corruption in Hungary.

"From football clubs to luxury castles; Orban's empire is built on scams and hustles; It's time to clean up, it's time to fight; We won't back down until Orban's out of sight," the lyrics say.

If you're surprised at the Green politician's decision to make his point through rap lyrics - you'd be right to be sceptical.

That's because it was actually written by an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot - ChatGPT.

ChatGPT, which reacts to users in a conversational way, provides convincingly human responses to questions using information from the internet. It can write essays, computing code and poems among many other things.

• New chatbot has everyone talking to it

Mr Freund asked the tool to produce a rap about corruption in Hungary. "I was quite impressed how it put widely known accusations against the Orban government into a rap text," he told AFP news agency on Tuesday.

Hungary is an EU member but has frequently clashed with the bloc.

It recently dropped to last place among members in a Transparency International corruption ranking that alleged "political elites" misused state and EU funds.

The diss track touched a nerve in Budapest and drew a swift response - initiating what may well be the strangest rap battle in history.

Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs posted a ChatGPT rap about Mr Freund which called him a "fighter for democracy" whose "agenda is shining bright".

In his view, the lyrics proved ChatGPT was "nothing more than a [expletive] generator".

So is the AI tool the future of rap? Well it's fair to say that judging by both efforts, the answer is a resounding no.