Steven Wilson, a well-known British musician, singer-songwriter and record producer, has expressed his concerns over the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in the music industry. His comments came after AI technology was used to “clone” his vocals on several songs and create new tracks.
Wilson, who has been the driving force behind a number of musical projects since the 1980s and is best known for his work in rock band Porcupine Tree, shared his thoughts in a social media post on Friday (July 19). “For the past few years, when asked in interviews about the future of music, I have said that there will definitely be a scenario where musicians will no longer be needed, and pre-recorded tracks will no longer be needed. Music will be created in real time by artificial intelligence, according to the listener’s current demands. You choose the singer you want to sing (Freddie Mercury, Aretha Franklin, John Lennon, etc.), the subject you want them to sing, and the genre of music. The music is then generated in real time, at which point you can choose to save it for later, share it with a friend, or delete it. Personally, I’ve just noticed some Steven Wilson tracks created by an AI, and it’s a big step in that direction. I don’t know who made them or what their motivation is, but it’s really hard to hear that it’s not me singing these songs.” Regardless of what I think about the quality of the music, this is eerie, almost surreal.
“We’re in the midst of a major shift in how music is made and how people interact with it,” he added. “Do most people care that they’re not listening to human music? The future is certainly changing. Let us know what you think.”
Wilson isn’t the only rock musician to have expressed concern about how AI will be integrated into music in the future. Last September, Queen’s Brian May told Guitar Player magazine: “I think there will be a lot of great things that come out of AI because it will enhance our ability to solve problems. At the moment, where I’m most concerned is in the arts. I think by this time next year, the situation will be completely different. We won’t know what AI will have created and what humans will have created.”
He continued, “I think we may look back on 2023 as the last year that humans truly controlled the music scene. … I’m prepared to feel anxious and sad.”
May added that he’s concerned about “the potential for AI to cause evil” in all fields, not just music. “I think this whole thing is very scary,” he said. “The impact is much more far-reaching than anyone has realized, or at least I have realized.”
During a July 2023 appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored, KISS bassist and vocalist Gene Simmons was asked if he was “excited or worried about artificial intelligence in particular.” [as it relates to] Aside from the music industry, I am concerned about the lack of legislation, as you enter a new, say, new planet, you are trying to land in a new place. [planet]Well, obviously there are opportunities out there. There are opportunities in minerals and all sorts of things. If there are no rules of the game… it’s like playing a sport with no rules. Who’s going to do what? There needs to be rules that are kind and beneficial to humanity, to women, to transgender people, to all kinds of people. OK, does that apply to everyone?
He continued, “The problem with AI is… AI is here, whether we like it or not. So let’s be smart and think about it and make laws. If an AI uses my voice, or a voice that sounds like me, to create a new song, and it sounds like me and it definitely sounds like me. So when you buy that, if an AI created it, who owns the copyright and publishing rights? Is it me because it sounds like me? I can say with certainty that it is me. So these are unknowns.” [territories]”
In May of this year, Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash weighed in on the debate about people using AI music generators as a tool to create melodies, harmonies and rhymes based on artificial intelligence algorithms and machine learning models. He said on the Battleground podcast: “I’m not too excited about this new development because I know most people will overuse it and it will be confusing and misleading, first of all. And then there will be too many different things that look and sound the same. I see that happening already.”
“I love going into the studio and recording bands live on analog. [my new blues] record [‘Orgy Of The Damned’]”So the idea of AI, I can’t see a meaningful application to what I do,” he continued, “and I’m interested to see who comes up with something that’s really cool and unique and useful to me. But I wouldn’t be too excited about an AI recreating something in terms of music, or actually creating something original. You can have an AI write lyrics or do whatever, but you’re the one doing the actual work, and that doesn’t excite me.”
“Technology itself is a human achievement. It’s a really amazing thing,” Thrash explained. “Technology always shows great potential for things, but at the end of the day, it’s how people use it, and that’s where you start to worry about it at scale.”
In a May 2024 interview with Spain’s Metal Journal magazine, EXTREME guitarist Nuno Bettencourt had this to say about people using AI in the music industry: “Everybody’s worried, everybody’s scared, they think AI is going to change things. But I love AI. You know why I love it? I want it to be more and more. I want more of it. What AI brings is that the more people who think they can use AI to mimic emotions, the bigger rock and roll will be for me. Rock and roll has changed a lot since the 1930s, and if you realize the advances in technology to synthesize everything from telephones to televisions to mobile phones to computers, what has changed with the guitar? Nothing has changed. Zero. What has changed with the drum set? Nothing has changed. What has changed with the bass guitar? Nothing has changed. Only the microphone.”
“Rock ‘n’ roll, to me, has always existed because it’s broken,” he explained. “It’s not artificial, it’s not perfect. It’s our imperfections that make us shine. That’s the danger. AI can write lyrics, write music, do anything. It can even record, do anything. But no matter how hard they try, it always sounds inorganic. Because even if they try to sound like, say, Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin didn’t sound like Led Zeppelin every night. Sometimes it was great, sometimes it was sloppy, sometimes it was phenomenal. That’s the danger. That’s the nature of rock ‘n’ roll, and AI can never recreate it. I don’t care how hard they try.”
” [latest] Extreme Album [2023’s ‘Six’] — Fuck EXTREME. It doesn’t matter if it’s EXTREME or not. I just made an album and people were like, “Thanks for the rock album,” “Thanks for rock and roll,” and I knew that. That’s the hunger and lack that we have. So, for me, the more sanitized pop music becomes, and it has been for at least the last 10, 20 years, so sanitized, so auto-tuned, and all that stuff, rock and roll becomes bigger.
“Sometimes I feel like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix,” Nuno added. “Rock and roll will always trump any technology or anything anyone puts into it. Because, you know why? You can never be in front of an audience. An AI can never get onstage and recreate what we do in a particular moment, what we say, the sweat, the love, the passion, the audience. That relationship is something an AI can never touch.”
Last September, former Megadeth guitarist Marty Friedman told Australian Musician editor Greg Phillips about people using AI in the music industry: “There’s got to be something good in it. And whether we’re scared of the technology or not, it’s going to happen. So I think we can fight it to the end, and there are people in the music industry who have been fighting analogue versus digital forever.”
He continued, “It makes me nostalgic to remember the days when everything was analog and you could sit down and listen to an entire album from start to finish. It was amazing and people still enjoy it. But technology has allowed us to have these conversations, Pro Tools has made it happen and some of the greatest recording ideas in history have come about.”
Friedman added: “We can’t resist it completely. It’s like spitting in the sky, it doesn’t mean anything. I think the best of AI is yet to come. AI hasn’t done anything to wow me yet. From what I’ve seen, it’s kind of cute and funny mashups and stuff, I don’t want to sit down and listen to an album, but technology and AI and all that stuff is real. For better or worse, it’s not going to go away. So the sooner we embrace it and embrace how to benefit from it, not just live with it, we’re all going to be able to enjoy life in a healthier way than just being old people who say, ‘I hate this stuff.'” It’s really easy for people, especially from previous generations, to fall into that mindset because they know how good it was back then. There’s a lot of shit out there now because of technology, and it’s easy to hate on that stuff, but it’s not going to go away. So what’s the benefit of being negative about it?
For the past few years, when asked in interviews about the future of music, I’ve told the following scenario…
Posted by Steven Wilson on Friday, July 19, 2024
