Why Grimes No Longer Believes That Art Is Dead
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A couple of years ago, Grimes thought art might be dying. She worried that TikTok was overwhelming attention spans; that transgressive artists were becoming more sanitized; that gimmicky NFTs like the Bored Ape Yacht Club—digital cartoon monkeys which were selling for millions of dollars—were warping value systems.
“I just went through this whole big ‘art isn’t worth anything’ internal existential crisis,” the Canadian singer-songwriter says. “But I’ve come out the other end thinking, actually, maybe it’s the main thing that matters. In the last year, I feel like things became way more about artists again.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The rise of AI, Grimes believes, has played a role in that shift, perhaps paradoxically. Earlier this month, Grimes was honored at the TIME100 AI Impact Awards in Dubai for her role in shaping the present and future of the technology. While many other artists are terrified of AI and its potential to replace them, Grimes has embraced the technology, even releasing an AI tool allowing people to sing through her voice.
Grimes’ penchant for seriously engaging with what others fear or distrust makes her one of pop culture’s most singular—and at times divisive—figures. But Grimes wears her contrarianism as a badge of honor, and doesn’t hesitate to offer insights and perspectives on a variety of issues. “I’m so canceled that I basically have nothing left to lose,” she says.
She argues that hyper-partisan hysteria has consumed social media, and wishes people would have more measured, nuanced conversations, even with people that they disagree with. “A lot of people think I’m one way or the other, but my whole vibe is just like, I just want people to think well,” she says. “I want people to consider both sides of the argument completely and fully.”
Across a 45-minute Zoom call on Feb. 14, Grimes explored both sides of many arguments. She talked about both the transformative powers of AI art and its potential to supplant the work of professional musicians. She expressed fears about both propagating a false “AI arms race” narrative, and the dangers of potentially losing that race to China. She implored tech leaders to build with guardrails before harms emerge, but stops short of calling for regulation.
As Grimes offered lengthy commentary about AI, politics, art, and religion, touching on topics including social media, K-pop, and raising her three children, who she shares with tech magnate Elon Musk, who has been leading President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, while refraining from comment on certain issues—and remaining coy about the album she’s currently working on. She did, however, express the desire to release music in the next “month or two” for her fanbase. “They always chill out when there’s music,” she says, ”I just need to give them some art.”
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
TIME: You were recently honored at the TIME100 AI Impact Awards. How have you been thinking about your potential impact on the world and what you want it to be?
Grimes: My impact on the world? I would like to have as minimal as possible, because it seems like all the impact I’ve had already, it occasionally goes very wrong.
If that is not the case, then I don’t know. I’d like to save it, I suppose.
Do you compartmentalize your impact on music versus tech versus anything else, or is it all within a larger approach?
I used to compartmentalize them, but they’re actually maybe all the same thing. I just went through this whole big, “art isn’t worth anything” internal existential crisis. And I’ve come out the other end thinking actually, maybe it’s the main thing that matters. So I don’t know. Perhaps they’re related.
But I think tech has a pretty big impact, and it’s going to define everything that happens for the next, possibly, forever.
What caused that existential crisis?
I think a number of things. As I’ve been sort of psychoanalyzing the culture for the last little while, when there’s not enough beautiful things, or when people don’t feel like they can make transgressive things… I think as of late, it’s gotten a bit better. I don’t know if it was something with the TikTok algorithm, where people just got really overwhelmed with being force-fed content. But last year, I feel like things became way more about artists again. And in general, I think it really helped music.
And I think also after the initial Midjourney bubble, I feel like I’m seeing a bit of a renaissance in visual art as well. Also, maybe just things got way more messed up. In general, hard times make good art.
What AI tools are part of your daily or weekly artistic practice?
I do have a penchant for a Midjourney addiction. Sometimes I’ll do Midjourney for, like, three days.
Do those visual explorations impact the type of music you’re making right now?
For sure. I was workshopping a digital girl group in there. What I like about AI art is just doing things that I would just never otherwise be able to do. Or I’ll do something and I’ll be like, ‘OK, what if I totally change the colors?,’ which is something that normally is very difficult and time-consuming when I’m doing regular art.
A lot of people in the K-pop industry have been more embracing of AI tools in the last couple years, like Aespa. Is that stuff interesting to you?
Aespa is one of my favorite groups. I think they’re kind of underrated for this. Also, if you go deep on their lyrics, sometimes their lyrics are very bizarre and strange. And they’ll just be some offhand comment about not succumbing to the algorithm or something. It seems really uncharacteristically advanced and strange for a K-pop group.
In your acceptance speech at the TIME event, you praised Holly Herndon’s Have I Been Trained, a tool to allow artists to opt out of AI training data sets. While it’s an amazing tool, only a couple of major AI companies have agreed to use it. Do you view part of your impact as trying to persuade these AI companies to adopt better policies or approaches?
I would be open to it. The geopolitical undertones of things, I don’t quite fully understand them. I’d be hesitant to undercut, or create a situation where legal regulation might come into play that causes us to lose an arms race in a scary way. So I don’t think I would call anyone or push hard on that, nor do I necessarily think they listen to me. And I don’t think I’d agitate legally for that.
But I think anyone who is willing to do that should. Just because I think it really reduces people’s emotional pain. I think a lot of people’s emotional pain comes from feeling like their work is being used to replace them. So of all the things people could do, if people would just allow people to remove themselves from data sets… Because it’s going to be such a tiny amount of people anyway. I don’t think it would make a meaningful difference at all if 400 people removed their art.
There’s this dichotomy being propagated now of, “there’s an AI arms race, we need to be first,” versus “We need to put up guardrails.” How much have you been thinking about that dichotomy?
I’ve been thinking about that quite a lot. Do you know Daniel Schmachtenberger? He’s a really good philosopher. Him and my friend Liv Boeree have said some of the coolest things about the idea of autonomous capital [a collection of AIs that make independent financial decisions to influence the economy]. This is my big paranoia. I’m not really scared of some sort of demon AI. But I am scared that everything is in service of making intelligent capital.
I’m worried that the AI stuff is being forced into this corporate competition. And it’s really pushing the arms race forward. And everyone’s focusing on LLMs and diffusion models and visual art and stuff, because it looks less hardcore to be doing more of a DeepMind science-y thing.
I’m sort of going on a roundabout path here. But there’s a rhetorical trap here where you can be like, ‘Well, if we aren’t the best, then China or Russia or some renegade thing could win, and terrorism would be easy. And so we have to have counter AIs that are very good.’ I find this to be a very dangerous argument. I don’t think we should pause or anything, or regulate people a lot. But I do wish there could be some sort of international diplomacy of some kind that is more coherent.
Do you consider yourself an accelerationist, or an effective accelerationist?
I’m probably a centrist, to be honest. If the doomers are here [gestures] and the accelerationists are here, I’m probably in the middle. I don’t think we should pause. I just really think we should have better decorum and diplomacy and oversight to each other.
If everyone who was a meaningful player in AI had a sense of what everyone else was doing, and there was more cooperation—that doesn’t seem that hard. But also, no one seems to have ever achieved that globally, for most things, anyway.
There’s been so much cool, groundbreaking AI art. There’s also been a ton of AI slop. Do you think that is going to be a persistent problem?
I think the AI slop is great. I think culturally, it’s a good thing that it happened, because one of the things that drove people to start really caring about artists again in 2024 was the AI slop. I think everything happens for a reason.
When culturally bad things happen, I think people get very pessimistic, but usually, it’s [that] we go two steps forwards, one step backwards. It’s a great mediator. So I think we need the slop. And it’s kind of cyberpunk.
What can you tell me about the album that you’re working on now?
Most of the album is sort of about me being a bit of a Diogenes about the ills of modernity while still celebrating them. I don’t know. I don’t want to say too much about it. I want to promise nothing, but in my ideal world, things are coming out within a month or two.
Has your music been inspired at all by the people who use Elf.tech to sing as you?
Not so much this music. Although I do really like the idea of having a competition with them. Putting together their best work and my best work, and then having everyone choose who gets to be the future Grimes.
Do you think you’re ahead?
I think I’m ahead now. In moments, I was shook. There have definitely been moments where I heard things where I got very shook.
There’s so many musicians now who I feel like have a lot of fear that AI is going to make it really hard for them to earn a living. Do you feel like those fears are founded or unfounded?
I think they’re somewhat founded. I think they are at times overblown. For example, Spotify being filled with easy listening slop is probably going to happen, and that probably is going to affect people to some extent. And I can see a lot of companies being easily corrupted by this. And just pushing those kinds of playlists, making lots of slop.
I think there are some laws against that, but I don’t quite understand the legal landscape. But overall, I do think again, it helps preserve the artist, as it were. I think it is probably overall worse for the session musician, and that does make me meaningfully sad. I don’t play instruments very well, but I think it’s a very good skill to have.
When the music stuff gets a tiny bit better, and you can stem things out easily, and you can make edits really easily—I do think that’s going to hurt traditional music in a meaningful way. It might even be somewhat of the end of it. I doubt entirely, but as a paid profession, possibly.
You told the podcaster Lex Friedman a couple years ago that you love collaborating with other musicians, because a human brain is one of the best tools that you can find. Has working with AI come close to that?
Not really. I’ve probably made, like, 1000 AI songs, and there’s been one legitimately good one and one that’s like an accidental masterpiece that is kind of unlistenable, but is very good nonetheless in its complete form.
Probably AI, in the short term, creates a bit of a renaissance in terms of what I do [as an] in-the-box music producer. But when it gets good enough, it’s a lot easier than relying on other people, especially if I can be like, ‘fix the EQ on this,’ or prompt very specific things. I think people should just retain the art of creating things and retain the art of knowing things. So the more granular it gets, I think actually, the less sort of evil it is as an attack on the human psyche or the human ability to learn.
Overall, I think there’s quite a bit of abdication of responsibility around what we are going to do as people’s jobs start being taken fairly aggressively. Luckily, there’s a massive population drop coming. So maybe everything is just fate and it’s gonna work out OK. But I feel like we might get, like, very, very, very good AI across every pillar of art before there aren’t any more people to make art.
You wrote “We Appreciate Power,” an ode to AI, seven years ago, way before ChatGPT exploded. How does that song resonate with you in this new era?
Honestly, I think it’s very ahead of its time. It’s kind of pre-e/acc. It’s still one of my favorite songs, honestly.
How do you feel about the people who take its message—of pledging “allegiance to the world’s most powerful computer”—literally?
I used to be very concerned about those people. Now I think those people are great. There’s not that many people who are truly in the suicidal death cult. I’m sort of surprised there’s not more AI worship already. There will probably be a lot of gods and cults. But also, I do think the death of religion is very bad. I think killing God was a mistake.
Why?
I understand there’s a lot of issues with all the religions previously. But “no religion,” I think, is having a big impact on cultural problems. Not only because there’s a lack of shared morality in a quite meaningful way, but because of all the things religions do—like ritual, like community.
Especially having kids. A lot of the coolest people I know who have kids are sort of like weird, neo-tech, Christian-type people. The built-in moral stuff: I now see what it did to me as a child. Now I’m like, ‘I don’t know if I would raise my kids religiously, but it’s something to think about.’ Because everyone has a shared morality and there’s right and wrong, and there’s moral instruction. Without religion, we haven’t filled the moral instruction with anything else. We’re just like, ‘hey, guess what’s good.’
I was talking to some Gen Z the other day, and she’s like, ‘I have a breeding kink.’ And I’m like, I think you might just want to get married and have kids. That was normal until pretty recently. I think people are pretty spiritually lost, and a lot of people are filling this need for moral authority with politics, which is leading to a lot of chaos, in my opinion. Because it’s not just like, ‘who’s going to govern the country?’ People are really seeing it as this is what you believe, and it’s very important that they maintain these sort of strict moral boundaries, which makes it very hard to have coalition agreement on anything.
I don’t know. It concerns me. Maybe we need some enlightened AI gods.
In terms of “neo-tech, Christian-type people,” there’s been reporting about how an ideology known as the Dissident Right, or NRX, is gaining influence in Silicon Valley and Washington. What do you feel like people should know about that movement?
I actually don’t know that much about that. I only just learned that it’s called NRX a couple days ago, if that’s any context, as compared to what people think I might know about it. I also think the not-mainstream right stuff is pretty fractured.
I think people think I’m into that, but I just like weird political theory. I like Plato more than any of that, for example. I just like strange ideas. The right is a lot less interesting to me when they’re actually in power and less of an ideas chamber.
Do you feel like people misunderstand Curtis Yarvin in certain ways? [Yarvin is a right-wing philosopher who has suggested replacing American democracy with a monarchy. Grimes attended his wedding last year.]
I have not actually read Curtis Yarvin, so I’m not going to make any statements about that. I think they possibly do, because I’ve met him. But I just am not familiar enough with his writing to have too deep of a take on it.
On a different part of the political spectrum, I know you’ve interacted with Vitalik Buterin a couple times.
He’s a good philosopher king. My ideal situation is philosopher kings, like 12 of them. Vitalik, I think, is a very good philosopher king-type figure.
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Vitalik has talked a lot about wielding tech as a tool for democracy and against authoritarianism. What do you feel like your relationship is to that mission?
I think a lot of the Ethereum-adjacent blockchain stuff actually has way more potential. I feel like a lot of things happen too early. Yes, the NFT situation was a disaster, and the Bored Apes are like a crime against art. When I was talking about my “art is dead” moment, it was partially around the apes. I was like, ‘How is the worst thing the most valuable thing?’ It literally makes my soul suffer in a deep way.
One of the things we did was pay people out royalties who did Grimes AI using blockchain. If there was some sort of easy blockchain publishing set up and there’s automatic splits based on how much you’ve contributed—I think it could be very good for the art economy, and for politics and for a variety of things. It would be a way better way to vote more securely. I think a lot more people would vote if they could vote from home.
Another key part of the crypto ecosystem from a few years ago, DAOs, showed a lot of promise, but often just turned into the worst version of capitalism, where the wealthiest token holders could exert so much influence. How did such a utopian vision end up so awry?
There’s both a lack of design and strategy. This is my issue with accelerationist stuff. If you have no strategy and no groupthink on some of these things, you just end up with social media, [which] could be net good, but it seems like it’s net-bad from a psychological perspective and a misinformation perspective, among other things.
The informational landscape was troubled already, but in terms of people’s mental health, [social media was] definitely like a disaster. Any sort of cognitive security and safety would have just made things so much less destructive. And now we have to go back and take things away from people, which makes them angry, and it’s very hard to do. In essence, we’ve given everyone crack in their pockets.
Because blockchain kind of had a spectacular failure, and now probably some evil things are going to happen, [it] might actually end up in a more decent space, because the barrier to entry is so high, a lot more design is going to have to happen, and we’re a lot smarter about making that not sh-tty. I don’t know. It’ll probably still be sh-tty just because of how the world works and human nature.
But I feel like someone like Vitalik is a good example of someone who’s like, “I choose to be not sh-tty, and actually, I’m actually winning.” If we can have more people like that—even one at all is just amazing.
As much as everyone hates cancel culture, in some ways, it’s a better way to police ethics. It always goes a bit too far, and then it’s a psychological hazard. But if you can take a couple steps back, it’s just a lot harder to do evil things, and ideally you can use social pressure rather than regulation, which might be exceptionally messy.
You’ve been tweeting a lot lately. What is your relationship to the platform right now?
I’ve actually been mostly off besides a couple days since the end of January or something. It’s just where all the cutting-edge news is, and all my friends use it, and the AI stuff. And it’s good to keep track of the political stuff. Ultimately, I don’t know. I love to debate. I like getting in fights. They hate me less on Twitter than everywhere else.
A few weeks ago, you tweeted: “I feel like I was tricked by people pretending to be into critical thought and consequentialism, who are acting like power-hungry warlords.” Would you like to expand?
Well, I knew there was some warlordism happening. I wasn’t a fool about it. I think there was a lot of, ‘I’m a very centrist Republican, and we’re gonna fix the FDA, and we’re gonna fix microplastics.’ And I’m like, OK, maybe I don’t agree with everything. A lot of this is a mess, but if we’re here, there’s some really positive things—let’s focus on these things.
I don’t wanna say too much, because I’m not an American citizen. But coming back to diplomacy and decorum: When people are like, ‘Haha, we won.’ I’m like, ‘what is the purpose?’ Don’t just be the anti-woke mind virus: Don’t just be a d-ck in the other direction.
When everything’s just memecoins and sh-t rather than just like… there are a bunch of bipartisan things that would be so f-cking great that would calm and unite the country. Like education, toxins, sh-tty dyes, the whole health situation. So much about policing, the legal situation.
They’re not necessarily prioritizing the things that would just make more people happy. The Democrats are terrible about this too, but I just hate when everyone’s just like, ‘Yeah, we won and you suck.’ Isn’t leadership about uniting everybody?
I don’t know. I feel like we have a lot of generals and not a lot of philosopher kings, which would be the ideal situation. Just like, Lee Kuan Yew-types. I just want people to come out here and throw everything at the kids and throw everything at education. You don’t need to be on either side to do things like that.
There were a lot of reactions online when you tweeted about your son X’s appearance in the Oval Office. What was your reaction to that moment?
It was like, “Grimes slams,” “Grimes speaks out.” It’s like, OK, it was a reply. But I would really like people to stop posting images of my kid everywhere. I think fame is something you should consent to. Obviously, things will just be what they are. But I would really, really appreciate that. I can only ask, so I’m just asking.
[On Feb. 11, Grimes—who shares three children with Elon Musk—responded to her son appearing before press at the White House with the tweet, “He should not be in public like this.” Several days after this Feb. 14 interview, Grimes tweeted directly at Musk, asking him to “plz respond about our child’s medical crisis. I am sorry to do this publicly but it is no longer acceptable to ignore this situation.” She later deleted the tweet, and a representative declined a request for a follow-up conversation.]
Do you feel like America’s leaders are thinking about AI and its development in the right way?
Whatever they’re truly thinking, we’re probably not allowed to know. I don’t have a ton of policy opinions about it. I wish there could be some more incentives for things that are more constructive immediately: medicine, education, making the legal process less expensive. It’s crazy that, in general, if someone has more money, it’s significantly more likely they will win. They can just make things go on for a long time, and the courts are super backed up.
What does competent leadership look like to you?
The way the U.S. government works and the U.S. Constitution works, and Congress and the Senate, things are supposed to be more coalitional. Especially in terms of international relations—I know it’s much easier said than done—but there just could be some better diplomacy and strategy.
I just feel like everyone’s kind of acting like a baby. And I think there’s reasons for this, but definitely, the media and social media are stoking a lot of hysteria, and then it’s very hard for anyone to make rational decisions. I don’t want to make too many statements. I’m not an American citizen. These are broad statements with no detail.
What’s your relationship to your fan base right now? It seems a bit fractured.
Just the Reddit. Everyone else is fine. Honestly, the angrier they get, the more my streaming goes up. So I suppose it’s fine, but I would definitely appreciate a less toxic vibe in the fan base.
But, you know, it is what it is. That’s where I have to rush music out: they always chill out when there’s music. I just need to give them some art.
I think when people are upset, it usually is actually coming from the right place. I won’t go into some of the conspiracy theories, but it’s insane what some of the things that people think. And I cannot correct them constantly because they become a giant press cycle whenever you correct them, and then the press are like,”Grimes responds to allegations” of whatever they think I wish to do.
So I just gotta put out art. I can’t begrudge people wanting the world to be better. I do think social media really incentivizes people worrying that other people are evil. And in general, I think everyone across the board is worrying too much that other people are evil, and probably only like 10% of people are evil.
Do you worry that you’re evil?
I think it’s extremely unlikely. If I’m evil, it’s probably because we’re in a game, and I’m an AI that was developed to screw things up. I’m not consciously aware of it.
This profile is published as a part of TIME’s TIME100 Impact Awards initiative, which recognizes leaders from across the world who are driving change in their communities. The most recent TIME100 Impact Awards ceremony was held on Feb. 10 in Dubai.