Dreams really do come true: The new app DJ Trump lets users put words in Donald Trump's mouth. Here's how it works: type the words you want to hear the 45th president say, and DJ Trump's tech does the rest. It automatically converts text into a video that's spliced together clips of Trump uttering those very words you entered.
DJ Trump was developed as a side project for two HBS alumni and entrepreneurs, Phil Hu (CEO of travel company cleverylayover) and Erik Westland (CEO of card game company IBETCHA). Westland thought of the idea of behind DJ Trump while using Snapchat's face-swap feature and he approached Hu with it.
“We made an algorithm that takes Trump’s speeches and splices them into individual words," Hu said. "We went through close to 20 hours worth of Trump videos, and now we have about 4,500 words for people to play around with.”
Instead of manually cutting and pasting words from Trump's speeches, which tends to render video soundbites choppy, DJ Trump's technology splices the words all on its own.
“When we rolled out the test product to friends, we were surprised that the sentences sound so smooth… Obviously, we tried a lot of movie quotes," Hu told us. "We threw in song lyrics - Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga and Disney songs. We did some trash talking. I have friends on both sides of the aisle, so we had a lot of fun.”
The app is free to use. Currently, it's available via web and Android. An iOS version will be coming soon.
Take it away, Mr. DJ...
