Planet Money/Interview

===Interviewhttps://www.npr.org/transcripts/1178290772===
GUO: So using this technology, Grimes is essentially unleashing her voice to go out and make music and earn money on her behalf without her having to be there at all. And so, of course, we had to talk to Grimes about all of this.
AI-GENERATED VOICE #4: (As Grimes, singing) I'm sorry, PLANET MONEY, but I'm unavailable for an interview right now.
GUO: No, actually, sorry - that was Kenny singing into the machine again.
AI-GENERATED VOICE #4: (As Grimes, singing) However, we did manage to talk to Grimes', like, co-conspirator/collaborator on all this technology stuff.
DAOUDA LEONARD: Hi, I'm Daouda Leonard. I'm the co-founder and CEO of CreateSafe. And, additionally, I am Grimes' manager.
MALONE: Do you know how many songs are out there with Grimes' AI?
LEONARD: So we've had around 300 songs distributed - or uploaded to the platform to be distributed.
MALONE: So it's 300 songs uploaded through the platform in how - what time period?
LEONARD: What's today - the 18?
MALONE: Yeah.
LEONARD: So 18 days?
MALONE: I just want to stop and reflect on how bonkers that is because, in just 18 days, because of AI Grimes, effectively 300 new Grimes songs were born into the world. And the real Grimes didn't have to do a thing - like, that is a productivity gain. I mean, here, just, like, listen to some of these songs.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
AI-GENERATED VOICE #4: (As Grimes, singing) Me again, you see the voice... (ph).
(As Grimes, singing) This is sequencing... (ph).
(As Grimes, singing) Love you, babe. I want to hold you...
GUO: So yeah, everything you just heard - that was AI Grimes. And now, all of those songs - they're just floating around out there. And if any of them take off and make money - boom - Grimes gets a piece of that.
MALONE: And Daouda wanted to tell us about this one specific song somebody had made with this AI stuff - this song right here.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COLD TOUCH (KITO FEAT. GRIMESAI)")
AI-GENERATED VOICE #4: (As Grimes, singing) You got things that want to make me cry. Light me up inside, inside.
MALONE: So this was created by an artist called Kito. And Daouda told us that the real Grimes heard it and liked it so much that she is now going to add her real voice to the song.
LEONARD: There's the original Kito version, and now there is going...
MALONE: With GrimesAI.
LEONARD: With GrimesAI - and then there will be, like, Grimes and GrimesAI and Kito.
MALONE: Oh, GrimesAI stays on it. GrimesAI stays...
LEONARD: GrimesAI is going to stay on it, right? Like, there's going to be, like, some of her vocals still on it.
(LAUGHTER)
MALONE: The splits will be interesting - right? - 'cause, like, GrimesAI is a 50/50 split, and then plus a new Grimes, which is, like, another 50/50 split maybe...
LEONARD: Yeah...
MALONE: ...So then it's like if...
LEONARD: ...but Grimes isn't going to try to - like - nah, I don't think that - that's not how Grimes rolls.
MALONE: No, no. Because if you ever get a chance to talk to Grimes about all of this stuff, like, it's clearly not really about the money. And we know this because we did ultimately get a chance to talk to Grimes about all this stuff. And this is going to take a little bit of explaining, so go ahead, Jeff.
GUO: Yeah, OK. So after our interview with her manager, right as we were wrapping up this episode, we finally heard from Grimes herself. She agreed to answer some of our questions via email.
MALONE: And then we got those emailed answers, as forwarded to us by her manager, but, you know, like, Grimes is a self-described, self-replicating pop star and, quote, "basically considers herself a cyborg." So in a PLANET MONEY first, we believe, Grimes has agreed to speak her written answers via synthetic voice clone. That's where we're at right now, Jeff.
GUO: (Laughter) So we begin this strange interview with the most obvious question. We asked Grimes, why did you decide to give the entire internet control of your voice?
AI-GENERATED VOICE #5: (As Grimes) We'd been trying to do this for, like, five years, but the tech just wasn't there before. So we moved on. And when the Drake/Weeknd stuff went viral, I realized this was pretty accessible technology. And to be honest, I didn't even think about it or ask my team. I just tweeted that people could use my voice, and it went viral.
MALONE: Again, that is an AI Grimes voice clone speaking aloud the answers that the real Grimes emailed to us, PLANET MONEY.
GUO: Yeah. Our next question for Grimes - what does having an AI voice clone version of yourself allow you to do that you couldn't do before?
AI-GENERATED VOICE #5: (As Grimes) Open the creative process to all humans. Grimes, to me, is art, not music. And while getting credit for my work is cool and used to matter to me a lot, accessing the human hive mind in a way that wasn't achievable even a few months ago feels like the most exciting thing.
MALONE: Now, there was this one big thing that we especially wanted to talk about with Grimes - a sort of economic problem that Jeff and I had been worrying about as we were making our own synthetic voice clone of a less famous - but still famous-ish - person, Robert Smith. And that economic problem that we were worried about is what economists sometimes call the superstar effect.
GUO: So yeah, the idea is that, sometimes, new technologies can vastly increase inequality. So think about the printing press or radio or television - these tools that let one person reach massive audiences - beam themselves into every single household. They can create these superstar economies, where a tiny handful of actors or artists - they become really popular, make a lot of money. And then all the other actors and artists - they get pennies.
MALONE: And so our question for Grimes was, like, why won't this also just happen with this voice cloning stuff? Like, doesn't it just let the already-famous people just replicate and become bigger? And Grimes, you know, acknowledged to us that, yeah, she does have concerns about those sorts of economic phenomena.
AI-GENERATED VOICE #5: (As Grimes) Yes, absolutely. I think this is also a debate to be had. I'm hoping smaller and midsize artists like me can workshop these phenomena a bit.
MALONE: But she also said, look, it is also possible that releasing her voice to the world could create opportunities for up-and-coming musicians. Like, getting your work to be noticed is really hard. But now, if you're, you know, a young songwriter or producer or whatever, you can kind of borrow Grimes' stardom to get your own name out there.
AI-GENERATED VOICE #5: (As Grimes) I run into absurdly creative humans all the time, but not a lot of people get to be artists. A lot of luck is involved in that. It's hard to build a fan base, and it's hard to get your work in front of the public. So if there's ways to reduce these algorithmic barriers by letting people inhabit my being, then I think we're moving in a direction I really like.
MALONE: It's a great point. Again, being spoken into the world by the synthetic voice clone of a cyborg, self-replicating pop star - a disclosure that we need to keep making.
GUO: It's so weird. And, you know, the big theme that we've been wrestling with in this podcast series that we're making is, what do these new AI tools mean for our jobs, you know, specifically as journalists who work in radio? And this strange cyborg interview with Grimes, it was incredible. It was alarming. It was all of these things because we talk a lot in radio about the intimacy of the human voice. And, I don't know, it totally felt like, at moments, we had spoken to the real Grimes, that we had this, like, real personal connection with her.
MALONE: Oh, for sure - which, of course, we had not. We had had no personal connection whatsoever. We'd gotten an email. That was it. It's bizarre. And, you know, look, it's one kind of bizarre, I think, to talk with the clone of some faraway pop star. But what was still left for us, Jeff, was to meet the clone of our beloved colleague, Robert Smith.Category:InterviewCategory:2023