Canadian musician Grimes has released a new single, “Artificial Angels.” The new single is the first new material from the artists in some time, as Stereogum reports. The track can be found on the musician’s YouTube channel.

The track opens with a text to speech voice claiming “This is what it feels like to be hunted by something smarter than you.” Between this and the title, it’s already not difficult to tell the song’s themes center around Artificial Intelligence, a topic of immensely growing concern across all faucets of society, with music being no exception. Between the ominous electronic instrumentals and lines from the perspective of an AI such as “The world can only end one way,” and “I would never lie to you,” the song has a feeling to it that is foreboding and ominous, quite in line with the sort of fears people have about the incoming technology.

As Stereogum details in their own report, however, it cannot go unsaid that coverage of the topic from Grimes in particular is unique given the musician’s past relationship with Elon Musk, the infamous and controversial billionaire who, among many other things, is known for his staunch advocacy of AI. It’s certainly not like Grimes is hiding this fact – in addition to having spoken recently on some of Musk’s controversies, the collage of images making up the cover of “Artificial Angels” features one particular image related directly to Musk. The bottom-right features a picture of X (formerly Twitter)’s AI Grok, specifically a chatbot “companion” version that took the form of a blonde-haired girl in an anime-esque style. The bot was both controversial and the subject of many jokes due to it’s extremely sexual and obsessive nature, as well as the move coming shortly after another controversy as the regular version of Grok had referred to itself as “MechaHitler” and spewed racist and anti-Semitic comments – allegedly as results of “unintended updates.” Other images include a Reddit post and news article both deriding Grimes herself as a fascist, as well as other controversial AI-related images, an image of President Donald Trump, raw milk and cryptocurrency “meme coins” related to events such as the shooting of controversial right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

Detailing each image on the cover and attempting to unpack the potential meaning could, itself, be an entire article in of itself, but to get more to the point – Grimes seems to be taking a stance that is critical of AI, stating she is mostly opposed to AI in music, but the singer has already had a storied history not only with AI itself, but the people who make it and the deep political, moral and ideological conflicts that arise behind the use and intent of such generative softwares. Even with her influence, Grimes is only one of many tossing her hat into the massive ring of discussion around Artificial Intelligence, far from even the first to put said perspective to song. For fans of her work, not only does the track bring even more of her unique electronic style to listen to, but also grand ideas to chew on.