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Music

Grimes Unveils Software To Mimic Her Voice (pitchfork.com) 49

Posted by BeauHD from the guinea-pig-for-AI dept.
Canadian singer-songwriter Grimes went viral late last month when she invited her fans to create music using her voice, stating that should would split 50% of royalties for any successful AI-generated song. Now, the artist has unveiled an AI voice software, called Elf.Tech, to make it even easier for users to deepfake her voice for their own AI songs. Pitchfork reports: Artists can commercially release the results in exchange for half of any master-recording royalties. Grimes announced a pair of new songs, "Music for Machines" and "I Wanna Be Software," in tandem with the launch, though their release date has not been set. In a Twitter thread about the software, Grimes asked users to "be tasteful" but said she would only block extreme uses, such as an AI Grimes "Nazi anthem" ("unless it's somehow in jest a la The Producers I guess"). "Baby murder songs" are also off the menu.

Through Elf.Tech, Grimes has also shared a demo of her collaborative remake of Richie Hawtin's Plastikman track "Passage (Out)." Find it in the "Bounces" folder on the website. You can also access stems to train your own Grimes AI. The project is powered by the generative AI Triniti.
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Grimes Unveils Software To Mimic Her Voice More

Grimes Unveils Software To Mimic Her Voice

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  • What is "grimes" ?

  • Royalties? (Score:3)

    by Barny ( 103770 ) on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @09:14PM (#63492986) Journal

    Not sure how royalties would be obtained when the AI generated tracks likely aren't copyrightable.

    Also, I understand no "Nazi anthem" or "baby murder songs", but she's going to be playing whack-a-mole on hard mode if she wants to deny all the things she's about to find out are also objectionable.

    And we aren't even getting into what would be actual copyright infringement or outright illegal. If she wants a share of the rights, she has to accept a share of responsibility when then next leaked secret government documents are put to music with her voice singing them.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by NateFromMich ( 6359610 )
      She wants attention, badly.

      • Re:Royalties? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @11:03PM (#63493158)

        She wants attention, badly.

        All entertainers want attention. That ability to hold attention is what entertainment is.

        • It doesn't seem like she has any entertainment on offer right now. Certainly not in this announcement, but even apart from that, it's been been almost decade since she released a good record. (I have listened to most of them front-to-back - Visions is probably still sitting on my iPod, wherever I lost it.)

          She also made $6 million hustling NFTs last year. So it seems like a particular kind of attention that she's interested in. The kind that babbles about AI and blockchain, then demands, "Pay me."

          Sure, celeb

          • Why do you view any of this as problematic? Do you think there's something "noble" about being an entertainer that shackles themselves to one revenue stream for a lifetime? I don't think she's demanded anything of anybody. While others are fighting the current, she's figuring out how to be relevant in a changing world. Good for her.

            I fail to see anything to be disdainful of here.

  • Gee, she does nothing, you do all the work, and you pay her half the profits?

    • Sounds like a sweet deal if you ask me. Muck around with software and you might get a payout if the song is a hit.

    • Re:Only the stupid may apply. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @11:06PM (#63493160)

      Gee, she does nothing, you do all the work, and you pay her half the profits?

      She is offering people a better deal than other artists.

      Grimes: You use my voice, and we split the revenue 50/50.

      Others: You use my voice, and I sue you.

      • So you never heard of vocaloid? It gives people full rights.

        • So you never heard of vocaloid? It gives people full rights.

          It gives people full rights to a synthesized voice that sounds like nobody in particular.

          • Wrong. Vocaloid doesn't use synthesized voice, it uses sampled voices from specific Japanese voice actors and singers hence it sounds like these voice actors and singers.

      • Even with Grimes' consent, this feels like a major legal trap for musicians, especially smaller/indie ones. AI-generated music looking to be copyrighted (and therefore earn royalties) would need to be significantly transformative, otherwise anyone can take and use them for whatever reason while skirting paywalls. Bigger labels/companies might have the lawyers to get away with this, but for smaller artists this could very well backfire on them, Grimes, or both.

        And frankly knowing Grimes, I really doubt she h

      • Re:Only the stupid may apply. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Wednesday May 03, 2023 @10:29AM (#63494006)
        If an employer offers 50% of what profit a worker produces as compensation it’s labeled communism. Usually it’s much lower and the worker slaves away for the least amount possible using the disparity in financial power of the employer over the employed. It’s not even proper socialism.

        • Youâ(TM)re seriously saying that you would toil away making music, then give half your profits to this other person who has literally done nothing?

          Have you gone nuts just to try to prove your point about working a job?

    • I wonder how long the music industry is going to let her muscle in on their turf.

      • Same things they did when indie artists put their stuff on Bandcamp for "name your price". Nothing. They are old, slow and increasingly irrelevant. They will go the way of the dinosaurs.

        • Ehhh, the likes of UMG are still raking in major profits, as evidenced by their recent quarterly reports. Dinosaurs they may be, the big labels still have an iron grasp over the entire music industry.

          BandCamp is a small fish in comparison. Certainly it can turn an actual (if modest) profit compared to the likes of Spotify, but other then that they cannot afford to take on the big players especially in the legal realm. And even with letting musicians set their own prices and the rather generous 80-90/10 spli

      • I wonder how long the music industry is going to let her muscle in on their turf.

        She'll be fine. If they mess with her, or hey, even insult her, Elon will just buy some record companies and fire the executives. I mean, the biggest player - Universal Music Group has a market cap of around $35 billion, so not even one Twitter worth.

        • Well that would be quite the ultimate beta move to do that for your ex-wife.
        • Grimes is just one of Elon's several babies' mommas. I don't think they're romantically linked in a way that would trigger defensive boyfriend response to the tune of a $35 billion buyout.
    • That's not a problem since all of my works are immediately sold to a completely-different-totally-unrelated-organization for two cents, so she's completely entitled to her penny.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by blitzd ( 613596 )
      Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Ah, just about all corporate culture... that's it.

  • But (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

    Her regular works kind of suck, and her voice isn't all that great to begin with. It's not Mariah Carey or Jennifer Lopez terrible, but still not worth using.

    • The quality and clarity of vocals aren't the only appeal. If they were metal music wouldn't exist. Given the choice between listening to Grimes or Jennifer Lopez I'd pick Grimes any day.

  • It only makes sense that Yoko would be the next to do this.
  • It seems logical that the media corporations have been using software for a while to data-mine existing successful songs to generate "new" ones. It gives more short-term profit than investing in random human singers.

  • Well, Autotune. (Score:3)

    by sabbede ( 2678435 ) on Wednesday May 03, 2023 @07:26AM (#63493666)
    The magic software that lets singers get away with being bad singers who can't hit the right notes.
  • This is just twelve hours of cats in estrus screeching!

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