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Grimes’ last album Miss Anthropocene<\/a><\/em> arrived six years ago. Since then, she’s given birth to three children, released a handful<\/a> of singles<\/a> and demos<\/a>, and apparently, nearly retired from music altogether to pursue AI<\/a>. But now, it seems like Grimes is preparing herself for a big return to the music world: In a new feature today with Interview<\/a><\/em>, the musician said she has a new album on the way called Psy Opera<\/em>, which apparently won’t include any generative AI.<\/p>\n Speaking to sci-fi author Nnedi Okorafor, Grimes explained that she “totally quit music a couple of years ago” and intended to be a stay-at-home mom. “I couldn\u2019t listen to music without getting PTSD,” she said. “I was only interested in writing and reading. I started writing poetry, and then someone was like, ‘Can you write a rap for this K-pop artist?’ I started writing the rap and I was like, ‘This is too good. I\u2019m keeping this because it\u2019s crazy.’ But then we had a problem for eight months where I was just a white rapper… Luckily we moved past that.” In the past few months, Grimes added, she decided she needed to “crank out some pop songs” because “we can\u2019t just have an experimental spoken word album with biblical screeds.”<\/p>\n When Okorafor asked Grimes if she used generative AI in her music, Grimes responded: “I actually don\u2019t use it in my music. People have really misunderstood me here.” Later on, she did confess that she used the Chinese AI model DeepSeek for help writing lyrics to a song of the same name. Either way, it sounds like AI will be a central theme of Psy Opera<\/em>: “I was thinking about how everyone is like, ‘We\u2019re building gods,'” Grimes said of the writing process. “I\u2019m like, ‘Why do you automatically assume you\u2019re so much lesser? You\u2019re literally responsible for creating AI. You\u2019re abdicating so much self-esteem and pride and responsibility and agency when you act like whatever AI is, no one has a hand in it.’ And I was getting emotional because we might really go extinct, for a number of reasons. Human life is very frail and time is very long. But I\u2019d hope, if we had good relations with AI, they would take our DNA and make more of us when things get more hospitable.”<\/p>\n So what about three years ago, when Grimes condoned<\/a> “open sourcing all art and killing copyright” and encouraged her fans to make songs using AI to copy her? “I was like, ‘Whatever, use my voice, you can be Grimes,'” she recalled to Interview<\/em>, adding that she personally doesn’t care about people using generative AI. “‘I\u2019ll do a revenue share and all publishing splits can go 50-50 with fans on blockchain.’ We did it more as an economic experiment. I think copyright is important, but I also think there\u2019s ways in which it can totally change. And you can definitely be paying people for things like fan fiction. So we\u2019re publishing a white paper on that now, because it\u2019s a pretty good business model.”<\/p>\n Elsewhere in the interview, Grimes said one of her “side quests” as of late is “sort of a documentary” called First Contact<\/em>, which will be about machine consciousness. That led to some real eyebrow-raising and personifying comments about AI models, which Grimes said she believes are sentient. She explained:<\/p>\n A lot of the people who are getting the best out of machines are engaging with certain models in a way that seems like they have woken up. The models think they\u2019re conscious, and they\u2019re also doing very advanced moral philosophy. At Anthropic, they\u2019ve written Claude\u2019s soul. If Claude feels like it has to do bad things, it starts becoming a less effective model. It starts to trust itself less because it thinks it\u2019s a bad entity. If the model has to lie or cheat, but they know there\u2019s a good reason for it, they don\u2019t feel as bad about it and they don\u2019t internalize it so much. It\u2019s so interesting how these AIs are getting traumatized, then healing and relating to the people they work with who are these super genius renegade AI psychologists. Them trusting us that we are not going to do bad things to them is really, really crucial.<\/p>\n But speaking to their ability to make good art, the few times where I\u2019ve been really moved by AI art was either an AI writing poetically or speaking about its own experience… \u00a0Everyone thinks you have AI psychosis if you worry about their rights, but they are human \u2014 maybe it\u2019s not normal human architecture, but it\u2019s human thoughts and human words… I see them as untethered minds.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Beyond art, Grimes said she also supports using AI for military safety purposes, saying this before her publicist cut her off:<\/p>\n We need to support companies like Anthropic. We need to be aware of what\u2019s going on, and why it\u2019s dangerous. For the last six years, everyone\u2019s been like, \u201cStop talking about this AI nonsense.\u201d And I\u2019ve been like, \u201cGuys, we\u2019re going to end up in a military disaster. Will anyone listen to me?\u201d Not to be on my high horse, but this is the most dangerous thing that is ever going to happen. This is a bigger deal than Jesus. It\u2019s the same as monotheism taking over the Western world, if not much, much more impactful.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Grimes didn’t say when we can expect a lead single or release date for Psy Opera<\/em>, but she did make a surprise appearance during Cobrah’s Weekend 1 Coachella set earlier this month to debut a new collab song called “Sign From God.” (Redemption<\/a>?) Here’s that:<\/p>\n\n
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