Grimes Releases AI Lullaby To Help You Sleep Or Relax
Remember when Grimes got into a big Twitter debate about the future of AI in music? Well, now she’s collaborating with an actual AI on some music. Specifically, she’s partnered with Endel, the app that procedurally generates “personalized sound environments” to help users sleep or relax — and the first algorithm to sign a major-label distribution deal — on the new project AI Lullaby, a “limited edition sleep soundscape” based on “exclusive new vocals and music by Grimes.”
To create AI Lullaby, Grimes recorded stems of music combining her own artistic vision and Endel’s psychoacoustic requirements — they claim that their work is “scientifically engineered to improve both sleep and wellness.” Those stems were then fed into the app’s algorithm to generate an ambient soundscape that adapts in real-time to your location, weather, and nature light exposure.
Grimes tells The New York Times that the project was born out of her desire for a “a better baby sleeping situation” for her five-month-old son with Elon Musk, X Æ A-XII. (She calls him “X.”) “When you have a baby, you’re always using white noise machines,” she says. “It’s much easier to get them to sleep if you train them on some kind of audio situation. And so I was just like, could this be more artistic?”
“In general, stuff for babies is really just creatively bad,” she goes on. “I don’t want your first introduction to the world to just be all this aimless crap.” She’s watched “Apocalypse Now and stuff” with her baby, and she says that he’s “into radical art. Like, he just actually is, and I don’t think it’s problematic to engage with them on that level.”
“I think, if approached properly, AI has the ability to radically fix our world,” Grimes adds in a statement. “I appreciate Endel because they represent the growing trend of humane technology. I hope that the fields of AI safety, research, philosophy, as well as humane AI and spiritual technology etc. can grow a lot in the coming years. We’ll need it!”
AI Lullaby will be available via the Endel iOS app until December 23rd, and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to AI For Anyone and the Naked Heart Foundation.