>>58704140Hatsune Miku is a voicebank in a software called vocaloid. She released in 2007 under Crypton.
There was another similar, but seemingly lower quality software called Utau. In 2008 2ch decided to make their own Utau voicebank on aprils foos. Teto was then put together through volunteers and released for free. She was fairly well known in the scene at the time and embraced as a Crypton guest character in the Project Diva (Miku and co.) games. However due to the relative low quality of the voice bank and some cultural changes within the community over time, she eventually mostly lost active relevancy.
In current day, there is a new software called Synthesizer V that is rather life-like, not without its limitations but better than traditional vocal synthesizing methods due to some manner of AI assistance. Come 2023, the Teto VA was contacted to make a new voicebank. Due to the upgraded tech, her voice sounded much cleaner, easier to use, and notably could sing in english very well.
Off bat, you could notice why she gained traction. Vocaloid originalfag culture with such a high quality revival? Great. People started making music with her immediately. Some people would make duets with Miku. One in particular gained a LOT of traction (Mesmerizer, currently sitting at 171m views on the official upload), which spawned a lot more TetoxMiku duets and further boosted her popularity, particularly among people chasing trends and the tiktok crowd. People then discovered her great ability to sing in english, and westerners went nuts.
Though this popularity had the unfortunate side effect of dragging in a lot more tertiaries that don't even listen to the music and just like popular thing.
Thanks for asking for my Ted Talk
