Anime army girls, cave people, fake weapons, and more in Grimes' "Artificial Angels" music video
Still of "Artificial Angels" via Grimes

Anime army girls, cave people, fake weapons, and more in Grimes' "Artificial Angels" music video

Just three days after she shared her new single, "Artificial Angels", Grimes released the song's accompanying music video. Watch it below:

Self-directed and edited by the artist — with additional help from KNGMKR and Charles Williams — the visual mirrors the goofy, tongue-in-cheek, yet still provocative tone of the track's original cover art. (As I described before, it's pretty buzzword-y.)

"Artificial Angels" cover art courtesy of Grimes

The "Artificial Angels" co-producer VADAKIN stars as one of Grimes' cavemen.

After starting with an anime girl shooting a hot pink sniper rifle, the music video goes full-force into flashy and provocative territory. It proceeds to show cavemen falling in love with the avatars and drones, glittery fake ads for weapons and hi-tech oxygen masks, video game footage, and logos for controversial generative AI companies. (OpenAI's Sora, which attempts to generate video from text-based prompts and trains on copyrighted material, bounces around while Grimes dances in front of a green screen.) Grimes smokes an "acceptance" cigarette from an "OpenAI" pack, and she wields a plastic gun alongside the avatars, who occasionally dance at a North Korean military parade or sport Soviet uniforms. She also runs around with a bow and arrow, trying to hunt down her bubbly, pastel-clad, "artificial" version of herself.

Victoria Borlando

New York, NY

freelance music journalist and critic

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