Grimes Offers 50% Royalty Share to AI Artists Using Her Voice

Cana­di­an syn­th­pop musi­cian Grimes has opened up her voice to AI artists with­out fear of legal reper­cus­sions. In a recent tweet, she announced that she will share 50% of the roy­al­ties for AI-gen­er­at­ed songs that use her voice, extend­ing the same deal to any artist she col­lab­o­rates with. Grimes empha­sized that she has no legal ties or record com­pa­ny, elim­i­nat­ing con­cerns of copy­right infringement.

Grimes’ state­ment fol­lows the removal of an AI-gen­er­at­ed song with mock vocals from Drake and The Week­nd by stream­ing plat­form Uni­ver­sal Music Group (UMG), which rep­re­sents both artists. The song “Heart on My Sleeve” accu­mu­lat­ed over 15 mil­lion lis­tens on Tik­Tok and over 600,000 lis­tens on Spo­ti­fy before it was tak­en down. UMG argued that releas­ing songs with vocals from its artists is a breach of con­tract and copy­right law.

Grimes advo­cates for a more open approach, stat­ing that she believes in merg­ing with machines and elim­i­nat­ing copy­right to lib­er­ate all art. She has pre­vi­ous­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with an AI start­up to launch an AI-gen­er­at­ed lul­la­by app and pre­dict­ed that gen­er­a­tive AI may mark “the end of art, human art.” She believes that when arti­fi­cial gen­er­al intel­li­gence (AGI) emerges, it will do art much bet­ter than humans ever could.

AI-gen­er­at­ed con­tent cre­ation has sparked numer­ous legal and eth­i­cal debates, par­tic­u­lar­ly in music, visu­al arts, writ­ing, online media, and voiceovers. The U.S. Copy­right Office has recent­ly ruled that AI art, includ­ing music derived from text mes­sages, is not copy­rightable. Grimes’ pro­posed divi­sion of copy­right would apply to “suc­cess­ful” AI songs that use her voice, but it remains unclear how and where the copy­right applies.