Grimes is encouraging people to make AI-generated versions of her music
‘I think it’s cool to be fused with a machine’
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Your support makes all the difference.Grimes has somewhat unsurprisingly embraced the fast-developing use of AI to create songs that sound like famous artists.
While other musicians including Nick Cave and The Weeknd have expressed their distaste over the use of technology to mimic musicians, both living and dead, Grimes is actively encouraging it.
“I’ll split 50 per cent royalties on any successful AI-generated song that uses my voice,” she tweeted this week. “Same deal as I would with any artist I collab with. Feel free to use my voice without penalty. I have no label and no legal bindings.
“I think it’s cool to be fused [with] a machine and I like the idea of open sourcing all art and killing copyright.”
She later suggested that she was seeking to clone her own voice and make it available to fans: “We’re making a program that should simulate my voice well but we could also upload stems and samples for people to train their own.”
“We expect a certain amount of chaos,” she told one follower who warned her the idea could backfire if she found she disliked any of the AI songs.
“Grimes is an art project, not a music project,” she said. “The ultimate goal has always been to push boundaries rather than have a nice song. The point is to poke holes in the simulation and see what happens, even if it’s a bad outcome for us.”
Her comments were made just days after streaming sites including Spotify were forced to remove a viral AI song that used the cloned voices of pop stars Drake and The Weeknd.
The track, titled “Heart on My Sleeve”, was listened to millions of times before the duo’s label, Universal Music Group, took action to have it taken down.
Legal experts have warned that AI-created songs will pose a new challenge for the music industry with regards to copyright issues.
Drake previously called the cloning of his voice “the final straw”.
Grimes, who has two children with her former partner Elon Musk, has previously claimed that AI could result in a world where “nobody has to work”.
This contradicts the Twitter owner and SpaceX CEO’s stance, as he has predicted that AI will become one of the biggest threats to humanity, and warned that it will overtake humans “in less than five years”.
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