What Is BOI AI? Board of Innovation Explained

When Plankton Goes Heavy Metal: The Truth About BOI WHAT and AI

If you have spent any time browsing internet music spaces or metalcore forums, you might have stumbled across a surreal yet surprisingly hard-hitting audio track: the unmistakable, gravelly voice of Plankton from SpongeBob SquarePants screaming over crushing guitar breakdowns and double-bass drums.

This is the creation of BOI WHAT, a viral music project that took the internet by storm. But as artificial intelligence continues to reshape the landscape of music creation, a major question always follows viral sensations: Is BOI WHAT actually AI?

The answer is a fascinating mix of human musicianship and modern audio technology.

The Human Core: Eli Strobeck’s Craft

Contrary to what some might assume about internet meme music, BOI WHAT is not a fully AI-generated song factory.

The project is the brainchild of Los Angeles-based musician, producer, and songwriter Eli Strobeck (who also performs under the moniker Mathue). Strobeck writes, records, and produces every single track from scratch.

• Real Instruments: The blistering guitar riffs, aggressive basslines, and thunderous drum production are entirely human-made.
• Original Composition: The song structures, melodies, and lyricism are crafted to fit both heavy metal tropes and classic SpongeBob lore.
• Legitimate Production Value: Tracks like Plan Z and Neon Tide are structured with the polished intensity of a professional modern metalcore record, going far beyond a simple joke track.

Where AI Actually Steps In: The Voice Filter

If Strobeck is writing and recording everything, where does artificial intelligence come into play?

AI’s role in BOI WHAT is strictly stylistic and post-production. Rather than having an AI algorithm generate a song from a text prompt, Strobeck records the vocal lines himself. Once the raw vocals are tracked, he runs them through an AI voice-conversion filter.

Think of it like heavy Auto-Tune or a vocoder used by artists like T-Pain:

• The emotion, timing, and cadence of the vocals belong entirely to the human performer.
• The AI acts as a skin or filter, shifting the frequency and timbre of the voice to mimic cartoon icons like Plankton, SpongeBob, or Squidward.

Viral Impact and “Spongecore”

Since launching the project, BOI WHAT has pulled in hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners across streaming platforms, proving that the internet has an endless appetite for high-concept novelty genres often dubbed “Spongecore”.

Songs like Plan Z even made waves on rock music charts, catching the attention of metal fans who were simultaneously amused by the Bikini Bottom theme and genuinely impressed by how hard the instrumentation went.

What BOI WHAT Teaches Us About AI in Art

The success of BOI WHAT offers an interesting counter-narrative to the anxieties surrounding AI in the creative industries. While many fear that generative AI will completely replace human artists, BOI WHAT highlights a different path: AI as a creative instrument.

By keeping the songwriting, arrangement, and soul of the music strictly human—and using AI purely as a vocal effect—Eli Strobeck demonstrated that technology can be harnessed to amplify creativity rather than automate it out of existence.