Grimes recently gave an interview where she discussed artificial intelligence’s role in the future of art and music. “I feel like we’re in the end of art, human art,” she said. This sparked a debate with musicians including Zola Jesus. Zola Jesus called Grimes “the voice of silicon fascist privilege” in a since-deleted tweet. “approaching the future of music and art with so much cynicism can only come from someone who really has nothing to lose,” Zola Jesus wrote.
A subsequent conversation between Grimes and Zola Jesus (which you can read below) has culminated in some thoughts from an expert in the cross-section between artificial intelligence and art, Holly Herndon. Herndon’s new album PROTO was created in part using AI.
“AI most likely won’t replace musicians outright,” Herndon wrote. “Sentient AI is a fantasy that I think sometimes distracts (often intentionally) from the political economic things that are happening around the tech at the moment.” Herndon went on to discuss the use of automated music systems to make stock music, how drum machines were inspired by the work of great drummers, the role of automated tools in the creation of music, the ethics of using an artificial “disembodied representation of an artist,” and much more.
“I’m not worried about robot overlords,” Herndon wrote. “I’m worried about democratically unaccountable transnational companies training us all to understand culture like a robot or narrow AI.” She closed by addressing both Grimes and Zola Jesus directly while discussing the concept of interdependent music:
If AI is the next step in human coordination, what can we coordinate
together? I don’t think that idea is incompatible with an AI avatar
(@Grimes) representation of an artist at all. That can be really
interesting! I also don’t think it is incompatible with strong scenes
that bring music meaning (@ZolaJesus). I hope that music will continue
to define the lives of people who congregate around it and fall in
love with it, just as it has defined all of our lives enough to be
concerned about this issue.
Zola Jesus responded, “I love you @hollyherndon,” adding,” “I love the idea of INTERDEPENDENT music.”
Find Herndon’s statement, plus Grimes and Zola Jesus’ tweets from the past week, below.