Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst Receive Austria’s First Digital Human Rights Award

In 2019, Holly Herndon released her album PROTO, made with her and her partner/collaborator Mat Dryhurst's AI baby Spawn. The musician completed her PhD at Stanford's Center For Computer Research In Music And Acoustics, and has engaged in debates about the effect of AI in the music industry with Grimes and Zola Jesus. Today, Herndon and Dryhurst received Austria’s first Digital Human Rights Award.

In a private ceremony, the Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, who said (translated by Instagram), "Art plays a key role in defending our values, translating our rights from theory to practice and shaping our era of Digital Modernity, especially in the field of Digital Human Rights."

In 2022, Herndon and Dryhurst launched Spawning, a platform that gives artists the agency to choose whether or not their work will be used to train AI. It has reportedly aided the European Union with their policy on text and data mining.

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