Grimes Celebrates Trailblazers Creating ‘Magic’ With AI
While much of the music industry has shied away from AI, Grimes has embraced it. In 2023, the musician and producer made headlines when she announced that she would allow fans to simulate her voice using AI to create new music—and promised to split royalties with those who did.
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On Monday, TIME recognized Grimes and three others leaders shaping the future of AI at the TIME100 AI Impact Awards in Dubai. Others who joined Grimes in receiving recognition for their work in the space included California Institute of Technology professor Anima Anandkumar, visual artist Refik Anadol, and Arvind Krishna, the CEO, chairman, and president of IBM. The evening also featured a performance by Emirati soul singer Arqam Al Abri.
In her speech accepting the award, Grimes began by referencing a famous quote from Arthur C. Clarke in which the science fiction writer observes that advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. She then used the on-stage moment as an opportunity to celebrate other notable innovators she found deserving of recognition, saying: “I wanted to shout out some of my favorite real-life wizards and some real-life magic that exists now.”
To her list of such magicians, Grimes named David Holz, the founder of Midjourney, a generative AI tool that creates images inspired by users’ prompts; Aza Raskin, a technologist who is decoding the language of whales with the help of AI; and Sam Zeloof, an entrepreneur known for getting his start by building silicon chips in his parents’ garage.
Grimes also highlighted singer-songwriter Holly Herndon, who created a website which allows users to detect if an artist’s work has been used in AI models, as well as a tool that allows artists to easily opt out of training datasets. “This one is particularly poetic to me because I think everyone is panicking over this issue,” Grimes noted. “The world is so focused on what’s negative that we don’t realize there’s magic solutions right in front of our very eyes.”
“Tech has a bad habit of not canonizing its heroes and, as of late, the world has a bad habit of not celebrating its wins,” she said. “There are a lot of people trying to save the world right now, and I believe they are succeeding.”
The TIME100 AI Impact Awards Dubai was presented by the World Government Summit and the Museum of the Future.
