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Interview/profile about Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst discussing their work with artificial intelligence in music and art.

Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst have just gotten back to Berlin from the Beeple Digital Canvas summit, a conclave of cutting-edge artists and curators. Such junkets have become part of the couple’s practice—they’ve advised policymakers in the United Kingdom and the European Union. (Whether politicians take their advice is another matter.) “It’s one of these moments when you realize there’s no driver at the wheel,” says Dryhurst. “Like, wait, I’m the expert.”‍The two met 20 years ago when Herndon was in Berlin categorizing music for a start-up. She liked his podcast for London’s Southern Records and emailed him to say so. When Dryhurst came to the German capital for a concert, they met in person and moved in together almost immediately. As two gregarious artists, they say, collaborating is the only way to hold a family together. Dryhurst has worked on Herndon’s electronic records, and they’ve started exhibiting under both their names. (You have to admit, though, that Herndon has the hair.)‍ The artists take a pragmatic stance—what Herndon calls the “sexy middle ground”—in debates around A.I. and tech. “We’ve been doing this forever,” her husband adds. “And then the culture war emerged on either side of us.” The pair don’t evangelize for godlike silicon intelligence, nor will they be smashing the machines. They also believe that today’s off-the-shelf A.I. tools won’t yield interesting art. When they started dabbling in the technology together soon after they met, large commercial models didn’t exist, and they had to make their own. At the same time, they’re certainly boosterish on tech. They were early investors in cryptocurrency and were eager to incorporate A.I. into their workflow.‍When the recent wave of interest in generative art, N.F.T.s, and A.I. crested, the duo was ready. In 2021, they released Holly+, a sort of software surrogate of Herndon’s voice that anyone can use to transform an audio file. The following year, Herndon and Holly+ put out a slightly stilte

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