When the AI-generated song, “Heart on My Sleeve,” using AI deep-fake voices of Drake and The Weeknd went viral, it sent shock waves through the music industry as to the implications for the future of music recording.
The song has since been taken down, but not before amassing 275,000 YouTube views, 600,000 Spotify streams and 15 million TikTok views.
Now while this has most music industry professionals up in arms, the music artist Grimes has seen this as an opportunity. She’s announced that she would split the profits of the royalties 50-50 with anyone who generates a successful song with AI using her voice, since she has “no label and no legal bindings,” in a Tweet last Monday.
She points out that it’s “no different than doing a collaboration with another artist.”
It should be noted that apart from her music, Grimes is somewhat infamous for being Elon Musk’s on-again, off-again partner with whom she’s had 2 children. She is also an accomplished visual artist, having made a lot of her own album covers.
This is not the first time that the Canadian artist, whose real name is Claire Boucher, has been quick to jump on emerging technologies. She sold a staggering $6 million USD worth of digital art through NFTs in 2021.
After her announcement, fans immediately started posting links to songs they had created featuring her vocals. Grimes said that she is looking forward to being a “guinea pig” for the technology, adding that she thinks it’s “cool to be fused with a machine”.
