Grimes wants fans to deepfake her music

The Future. On the heels of Universal Music’s takedown of the fake Drake track “Heart on My Sleeve,” Grimes announced that she wants people to use AI generations of her voice in exchange for a cut of the royalties. While that may seem impossible in practice, it wouldn’t be far-fetched for Grimes to pull a Holly Herndon and build a software that creates generations for these random “collaborators.”

Programming royalties
Grimes is embracing that her likeness will be co-opted for AI… and just wants to make sure she gets a piece of it.

• Grimes tweeted, “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. Feel free to use my voice without penalty. I have no label and no legal bindings.”
• The artist didn’t elaborate on how this would work, but also noted that this arrangement could retroactively apply to AI-generated songs that have already been released and gone viral.
• She said she’s happy to play the “guinea pig” to see if this gambit works and that she’s pushing for the open sourcing of art and an end to copyright (words that all labels and many artists probably don’t agree with).

Grimes has been interested in AI for a while. She teamed up with music startup Endel to generate a lullaby for her child, X Æ A-12 — which, as Forbes points out, includes the Elven spelling of AI.