Grimes made an AI lullaby to help you sleep, says her baby X Æ A-XII is “into radical art”

Judy Moreno

Grimes is a fan of AI and has now collaborated with the Endel sleep app people to make an "AI Lullaby" which is a "limited edition sleep soundscape with original music and vocals by Grimes." Endel says in a statement, "The sounds are processed by Endel Pacific technology to generate а soundscape that adapts in real-time to your location, weather, and natural light exposure. AI Lullaby is scientifically engineered to help children and adults sleep and nap better." Sleeping has proven harder in 2020, that's for sure. You can try it out now.

Meanwhile, Grimes talked with The New York Times today and tells them she was inspired to work with Endel to find “a better baby sleeping situation” for her five-month-old son, X Æ A-XII Musk (she calls him "X," if you're wondering). “When you have a baby, you’re always using white noise machines,” she told the Times. “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. I don’t want your first introduction to the world to just be all this aimless crap."

Grimes tries not to expose baby X to aimless crap. "I’ve watched ‘Apocalypse Now’ and stuff with my baby. 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."

Baby X was also a test subject for the AI Lullaby app. "The first version, there was too many sort of sharp bells, and it caused tears and just general chaos,” she told The Times, saying that after reworking the sounds “X would smile more and stuff...I was basically personally just referencing ambient music I’ve heard, and then kind of trying to make it cuter."

Much of the Times interview was about the potential of AI art. (You may remember last year, she said "live music may be obsolete soon" which rings a little different in our pandemic times.) "If you feed an A.I. all the greatest artists ever, it will probably be able to auto generate really creative, really evocative art," Grimes theorizes. "Like, David Bowie times a million. An artist who’s just super charismatic and amazing and fun, and just makes the best music, and can make 1,000 songs a day, and just do 1,000 interviews a day, simultaneously. There’s no reason that can’t exist."

Grimes released Miss_Anthropocene back in February.