Imogen Heap has gone full Black Mirror

Remember that episode of Black Mirror where Miley Cyrus played a pink-haired pop star named Ashley O? If that insanely catchy song distracted you from the episode’s real plot, here’s a refresher: Ashley has an AI-powered robot made that clones her entire conscience and then tries to murder her. Seems like a pretty clear warning not to attempt the same thing in real life, no? Yeah… um… Imogen Heap clearly hasn’t seen that episode.

“I’ve got to show you this thing—it’s going to change your life!” the artist greeted her interviewer from The Guardian before proceeding to take the whole “we should embrace AI” thing about a mile further than most any of her peers have before. For the past two years, the “Hide And Seek” singer has apparently been using a ChatGPT-powered voice recorder to gather huge amounts of data about her life and work. This bank of knowledge will be used to create an AI “assistant” (read: clone and future resource competitor) named Mogen, with whom Heap hopes to one day have an “all-knowing connection.” “Anything I’ve ever said or done, I want Mogen to have access to that,” Heap, who’s apparently never watched a sci-fi movie in her life, said. “In a way, I’ve been working on [her] all my life.”

For now, Heap is planning to use Mogen to block out distractions and increase fan interaction. The actual human artist is currently working on a three-part, fourteen-minute track (the first section of which drops later this month) that she’s encouraging fans to remix and sample through interaction with the clone. “It’s about empowering the song to have the tools to go and collaborate, to go and make love with different people. I don’t want to keep it locked in the basement; I’ve never felt protective or possessive over [my music],” she said. Personifying the song itself is a really creative way to admit that bringing in AI necessarily decreases the human element in creation, but we digress.

As for environmental concerns surrounding AI processing, she calls those “very simplistic” and “based out of fear.” (To her credit, she’s donating a portion of the proceeds from her new song to Brian Eno’s climate foundation EarthPercent.) Overall, the goal is to create a robotic twin to do her busy work and give her more time in the day, which will definitely work with absolutely no issues at all. At least we’ll always have the “Hide And Seek” SNL skit if things go south.