"[7] Auto-Tune is available as a plug-in for digital audio workstations used in a studio setting and as a stand-alone, rack-mounted unit for live performance processing.

[12] Auto-Tune was developed by Andy Hildebrand, a Ph.D. research engineer who specialized in stochastic estimation theory and digital signal processing.

[1] He conceived the vocal pitch correction technology on the suggestion of a colleague's wife, who had joked that she would benefit from a device to help her sing in tune.

[13] Hildebrand's method for detecting pitch involved autocorrelation and proved superior to attempts based on feature extraction that had problems processing elements such as diphthongs, leading to sound artifacts.

[1][14] The song "Fragments of Life" by the duo Roy Vedas was released on August 17, 1998, heavily using the distorted Auto-Tune technique.

[20] The English rock band Radiohead used Auto-Tune on their 2001 album Amnesiac to create a "nasal, depersonalized sound" and to process speech into melody.

According to the Radiohead singer, Thom Yorke, Auto-Tune "desperately tries to search for the music in your speech, and produces notes at random.

[22] He cited the new jack swing producer Teddy Riley and funk artist Roger Troutman's use of the talk box as inspirations.

[23] Eventually dubbed the "T-Pain effect",[7] the use of Auto-Tune became a fixture of late 2000s music, where it was used in other hip hop/R&B artists' works, including Snoop Dogg's single "Sexual Eruption",[24] Lil Wayne's "Lollipop",[25] and Kanye West's album 808s & Heartbreak.

[29] However, other country singers, such as Allison Moorer,[30] Garth Brooks,[31] Big & Rich, Trisha Yearwood, Vince Gill and Martina McBride, have refused to use Auto-Tune.

In the same way that Miles equipped Hendrix to stay pop-relevant, Wayne's flirtation with the VST plugin du jour brought him updial from JAMN 94.5 to KISS 108.

"[37] Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak was generally well received by critics, and it similarly used Auto-Tune to represent a fragmented soul, following his mother's death.

"[40][41] At the 51st Grammy Awards in 2009, the band Death Cab for Cutie made an appearance wearing blue ribbons to protest the use of Auto-Tune.

[43][44] Christina Aguilera appeared in public in Los Angeles on August 10, 2009, wearing a T-shirt that read "Auto Tune is for Pussies".

In 2004, the Daily Telegraph music critic Neil McCormick called Auto-Tune a "particularly sinister invention that has been putting an extra shine on pop vocals since the 1990s" by taking "a poorly sung note and transpos[ing] it, placing it dead centre of where it was meant to be".

[47] In 2009, Time quoted an unnamed Grammy-winning recording engineer as saying, "Let's just say I've had Auto-Tune save vocals on everything from Britney Spears to Bollywood cast albums.

[51] Used by stars from Snoop Dogg and Lil Wayne to Britney Spears and Cher, Auto-Tune has been criticized as indicative of an inability to sing on key.

[62] The big band singer Michael Bublé criticized Auto-Tune as making everyone sound the same – "like robots" – but said he used it when recording pop music.

[64] In 2023, multiple creators on the social media platform TikTok were accused of using Auto-Tune in post-production to correct the pitch of singing videos presented to appear as live, casual performances.

The Gregory Brothers digitally manipulated the recorded voices of politicians, news anchors, and political pundits to conform to a melody, making the figures appear to sing.

In 2014, during season 18 of the animated show South Park, the character Randy Marsh uses Auto-Tune software to make the singing voice of Lorde.