Where does your AI journey begin?

Honestly, it started when I was a kid, which is weird maybe. We were going through my old sketchbooks from college last year and found a bunch of AI theory. I have always been talking about this; it just wasn’t possible before. But I started to delve into the possibilities of art a bit before the time of cryptocurrencies. That’s when we first tried to open Grimes: 2018 or 2019.

What does “open source” Grimes mean?

I’m really interested in the art of identity. Us I tried to sell my soul — 10 percent of it — in a legally binding agreement. But no one cared, and it’s also at a ridiculously high price that no one will ever buy, like $10 billion. But if they buy it, then I accept my fate and it will be worth it.

Only a person you know can afford it.

Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to pay for that. But my soul is already gone. I already completely he lost control of Grimes’s narrative. I get accused of war crimes all the time.

So how do you go from that to opening Grimes musically?

I probably feel less pain than the average person from those things, because the amount of ego death I’ve had to go through to remain functional is pretty high. The kind of weird, gross feeling many people get when they hear their voice used in a way they didn’t intend: I’m subjected to more crazy press than the average person. I’m so used to it.

Grimes started because I was in a very punk scene and I was nervous about putting on a pink dress and dancing and doing pop music. Part of what I was interested in doing at the time was upsetting people. Even now, what are the limits? What is the Overton Art Window? What is allowed?

How would you explain, for example, to your grandmother, what are you doing now with the AI?

People keep getting really mad, saying, “I want to hear something a human did!” And I’m like, humans did all this. You still have to write the song, produce the song, and sing the vocals. The part that is AI takes the harmonics and timbre of the voice and moves them around to be consistent with my voice, as opposed to the person’s original voice. It’s like a new microphone.