Grimes is going all-in on AI and appears to have wiped her Twitter account in the process. Or maybe Twitter did. Either way—it’s back for now.
The singer announced a 50/50 royalty split with anyone who released an AI-generated music track featuring her voice. Then she took that a step further by releasing the tools to help make it happen with her new Elf.Tech project. It allows users to upload or record a cappella recordings that will be transformed into a GrimesAI version of your vocal utilizing the artists sound.
“This is all a beta test so it may be imperfect at first,” Grimes wrote on Twitter when announcing the new tech. “But! Let’s try this out!”
Hours after the disappearance of her tweets, the star’s tweets reappeared. It’s unclear whether she deleted them herself, or if something happened in Twitter infrastructure to show them as deleted. As it stands, Grimes is back to promoting her AI project and highlighting songs that now feature AI-created vocals.
“The first convincing AI Grimes song is here,” reads one of the retweets on the artists’ official account. “‘In Another Life‘” features a vibrant + uncanny GrimesAI who inhibits a liminal space between the Halfaxa and Visions eras and it’s a banger. The future is wild,” the tweet continues.
“Of course our software programs don’t understand or even try to mimic any kind of emotions, but they act as a catalyst, egoless, non-threatening, simplistic yet genius collaborators,” Grimes says of machine learning models in 2019. “They are enabling agents that allow us to better share what we are limited to express.”
Grimes’ Elf.Tech project is also making it easy for users to submit their works to DSPs. Songs featuring the GrimesAI-1 vocals can be uploaded for distribution to DSPs for $9.99/year. Creators who use her voiceprint agree to share an equal % of the master recording royalties distributed on streaming services, onchain marketplaces, and other DSPs.