As Grimes gets deeper and deeper into the behind closed doors world of Silicon Valley and all of its nefarious inner workings thanks to full-time daddy Elon Musk, she has recently rubbed fellow musician, synthpop goth goddess Zola Jesus, the wrong way with a comment that declared, “We’re in the end of art, human art,” during an interview on theoretical physicist Sean Carroll’s podcast, Mindscape, this week. Grimes instead believes that AI will take over most musicians’ jobs within the next thirty years as Artificial General Intelligence becomes accessible. Zola immediately fired back by calling out Grimes’ blasé attitude about the effects that would have on people who actually connect to music precisely because of the human touch all over it, zeroing in on her “silicon fascist privilege.” Further adding that Grimes is the voice of someone “approaching the future of music and art with so much cynicism [that] can only come from someone who really has nothing to lose.”
And it’s true, Grimes would really only gain from the dominance of AI, already amending her “brand” to fit into what that future might look like. Starting from her series of virtual avatars (one called “War Nymph”) to the entire theme of her forthcoming 2020 album Miss_Anthropocene, featuring technology reverent tracks that include, most noticeably, “We Appreciate Power.” Her latest single, “My Name Is Dark” (not to be confused with “Pretty Dark”) is rather analog in comparison, inspired by her constant battle with insomnia (in addition to those who would deign to tell her that the future will not be run by robot overlords). Originally called “That’s What The Drugs Are For,” Grimes insists, “I don’t need to sleep anymore/That’s what the drugs are for” in between tarnishing a boy and girl for their commitment to a conventional god in the form of, “The boy is such a bore, the girl is such a bore/I never trust a girl who let him pray to God for sure, yeah.” For, in Grimes’ mind, “God” as a spiritual concept has long ago been replaced by other entities to worship in the twentieth and now, most especially, twenty-first centuries. And anyone who still “believes” is surely both utterly banal and firmly anti-progress. Alluding to the purgatory of a sleepless existence and one in between the full-fledged embracement of technology versus a light flirtation with its takeover, Grimes sings, “Hey, hell’s a place like this.” The religious imagery remains a constant throughout, with the pièce de résistance lyric being, “Paradise on the right, and h-h-hell on my left/And the A-a-angel of death right behind me/And the angel of Death just said to God, ‘Un-fuck the world, un-fuck the world/You stupid girl, you stupid girl’.”
For the un-fucking of the world to occur, it seems Grimes would prefer that we let AI enfold us and allow it to do what it does best: apparently, art. In Grimes’ estimation, it’s “gonna be so much better at making art than us.” Granted, if we’re basing what’s available in the current musical landscape (with Adele, Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift being the most chart-topping musicians of the past several years), it’s not difficult to say that technology could probably shit out something better, or at least equitable. But what about those musicians still willing to take risks while incorporating technological advances in their production as opposed to allowing an all-out takeover? SOPHIE would be a prime example of this. So, too, would Berlin-based singer, composer and music theorist Holly Herndon. Which is likely why she interjected her own thoughts on the matter into the brewing feud between Grimes and Zola Jesus–each side drawing a line in the sand about an art world built entirely on AI versus human control.
Offering a middleground perspective, Herndon, who incorporates her voice as well as those of the computer-based Max/MSP to generate unique vocals and instruments, stated that on the one hand, the advancement of AI will be a great way to “augment the producer’s palette.” She also noted, “AI tools will cut costs to make generic music, and there is a commercial incentive to progress this. Most research in music and AI is concerned with this… a combination of music systems and human performers, like AIVA, will almost certainly begin to appear in the creation of stock music or cheap music for film and commercials.” Despite being more optimistic about AI than Zola Jesus, she couldn’t help but add toward the end, “The way things appear to be headed, most AI is just capitalism on speed”–aggregating the collective for the financial gain of one individual.
While it’s a beautiful dream for Herndon to believe that with the AI tools that will invariably become more normalized as the century wears on, a collaborative and “interdependent” process among musicians can thrive, in all likelihood, the lion’s share of benefits pertaining to this technology will go to the ilk that Grimes is dating. Somewhat coincidingly with this argument, yet another Master Class advertisement on YouTube of late has been touting taking an online course with Hans Zimmer, who says “One microphone on a laptop. Ideas are not limited by budget. The creative process takes place in your head. You just need to break through the myth that you can’t create a great Hollywood blockbuster on an iPad. This is a musician’s life. Everybody tells you not to do it and get a real job. If somebody tells you that there’s a rule, break it. That’s the only thing that moves things forward.”
This series of sentences from Zimmer is a dichotomy that presents both sides of Grimes’ and Zola Jesus’ debate. The question is, will the twenty-first century reveal that AI has seamlessly melded with human ambition or infiltrated music (and all other art mediums) with insidious autonomy? The fact that generic music already abounds in the present moment (think endlessly playing covers of already bad hits at places like Starbucks) can bode both well and unfavorably for the future of “great art.” Because the more schlock there is, the easier it becomes for people to tell when something is meaningful versus mediocre. Then again, if that were the case, Madame X would have been nominated for a Grammy.
