Grimes gives fans permission to use her voice on songs created by AI

24 April, 2023

Grimes

Grimes has weighed in on the ongoing artificial intelligence debate, and permitted fans to use her voice to create new music using AI.

The 35-year-old singer took to Twitter to share her thoughts on the process of using AI platforms to create new music, and insisted that she is fully open to it because “it’s cool to be fused [with] a machine”.

She also told fans that she is more than happy for them to sample her voice using artificial intelligence as a means of making music. She does, however, expect them to give her half of any royalties made from the tracks.

“I’ll split 50% royalties on any successful AI generated song that uses my voice. Same deal as I would with any artist i collab with,” she wrote in an update earlier today (April 24). “Feel free to use my voice without penalty. I have no label and no legal bindings.”

She continued: “I think it’s cool to be fused [with] a machine and I like the idea of open sourcing all art and killing copyright … We’re making a program that should simulate my voice well but we could also upload stems and samples for ppl [people] to train their own.”

The discussion was provoked in response to an article she shared in the post, which was centered around a song called ‘Heart On My Sleeve’, which used AI to generate vocals inspired by Drake and The Weeknd.

Posted to TikTok last week, the track soon became a huge viral hit, and within a matter of hours, reached 13 million views on TikTok and over 100,000 views on YouTube. On Tuesday (April 18), however, the track was taken down by Universal Music Group, who accused the song of representing “a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law” and “denying artists their due compensation”.

“[It] begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on,” the statement read. “The side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation.”

Grimes isn’t the only artist to have spoken out in favour of AI methods of creating music. Last week, former Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher took to Twitter to praise a band who used artificial intelligence to develop a “lost” Oasis album.

Grimes
Grimes attends the 2021 Met Gala. CREDIT: Taylor Hill/WireImage

Less than a week since debuting online, the album – cleverly named ‘AISIS’ – has already gathered tens of thousands of views, kickstarted an online debate, and had an overwhelmingly positive response from many Oasis fans. Sharing his appreciation for the project, Gallagher wrote: “Not [heard] the album [but] heard a tune. It’s better than all the other snizzle out there.”

He then told another follower that he found the project “mad as fuck” and praised the AI-generated vocals for making him sound “mega”.

Bad Seeds frontman Nick Cave, on the other hand, has openly shared his disdain towards using AI to create art – going as far as labelling it as a “grotesque mockery of what it means to be human”. He further shared his resentment of the concept in an interview with The New Yorker, where he said he wanted platforms such as ChatGPT to “fuck off and leave songwriting alone”.

In other Grimes news, the Canadian musician – whose real name is Claire Boucher – is set to present a closing keynote speech on artificial intelligence at the International Music Summit (IMS) in Ibiza later this month.

She will be closing the three-day conference with a presentation sharing her thoughts on music tech, AI and the metaverse on April 28. The event will be co-hosted by Pete Tong and Jaguar.

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