“Artificial Intelligence” by Mike Dean (ft. The Weeknd)

With “Artificial Intelligence” being released on 29 April 2023, Mike Dean can concurrently be counted as one of the hottest producers in the game, especially as far as the hip-hop/R&B genre is concerned. He regularly works with A list vocalists, including The Weeknd, with the pair having been professionally and regularly associated since 2015. 

And “Artificial Intelligence” is a song that Dean produced and co-wrote with The Weeknd, being from Mike’s fourth studio album, “4:23”, which Imperial Records and MWA Music put out on the aforenoted date.

To note, the cover art of this song apparently features a younger Mike Dean, mullet and all.  He has been hard in the hip-hop game since the early 1990s, more specifically, as a Houston native, being heavily involved in the Texas rap scene at the beginning of his career. Actually as of the dropping of this track, Mike Dean is actually approaching 60 years old.

Concerning his relationship with The Weeknd, the pair went about backing up Metro Boomin, another megahit producer, during the 2023 Coachella Music Festival. And during that time they were able to put together four new tracks, all of which, including “Artificial Intelligence”, are found on “4:23”.

The “Artificial Intelligence”

Lyrically this song is very terse and doesn’t feature a lot of facts, if you will. But it is strongly emotional, and what can be ascertained, most simply interpreted, is that it revolves around an unrequited love. In other words, the singer appears to be very much in love with the addressee. 

But the latter is “so far away” and furthermore has her ‘heart in another place’, which basically sounds as if she’s not nearly as interested in the relationship as The Weeknd is. So here we find the singer in his feelings, trying to figure out a way to firmly grasp the apple of his eye’s attention, which, all lyrics considered, seems to be a lost cause.

But that then begs the question of what the title is supposed to mean in context. The term “artificial intelligence” is not actually found in the lyrics. But “false intelligence”, which we will take as pointing to the same notion, is.

“Oh-huh, oh-huh
Oh, oh-oh
You could have me on my knees
Like I was about to pray
Idolizin’ at your feet
Know you are so far away
I will travel overseas
But your heart’s in another place
How do I even compete?
Emotionless, emotionless
I’m at war with false intelligence, oh yeah
They’re trying to take my soul, oh
They’re trying to take my soul, yeah”

Some scholars have daringly hypothesized that what The Weeknd is referring to in that regard is the advent of AI songs, with at least one currently being in circulation that has successfully imitated his voice. 

So the vocalist states that he’s “at war with false intelligence”, according to this theory that sentiment represents him being able to perceive an upcoming industry battle between real-life musicians like himself and those that are computer-generated.

But since this is, once again, a song of unreciprocated love, inserting such a sentiment therein would be akin to totally changing the established subject matter as it concludes, a move that wouldn’t really make sense. 

So another theory is that the term “false intelligence” points to the vocalist lying to himself. Or put otherwise, he is unable to accept the fact that by the looks of things the person he fancies doesn’t feel the same, and the associated confusion or “false intelligence” is what’s ‘trying to take his soul’.