Revered musician Sting is unimpressed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and is predicting an upcoming battle against the technology.
“The building blocks of music belong to us, to human beings,” the 17-time Grammy winner told the BBC. “That’s going to be a battle we all have to fight in the next couple of years – defending our human capital against AI.”
The use of AI is increasingly prevalent in music and last week, U.K. creative industry chiefs called for regulation in the sector. Recent high profile examples of usage include David Guetta using AI technology to add the “voice” of Eminem to one of his songs; and an apparently artificial-intelligence-generated “collaboration” between “Drake” and “the Weeknd” went viral and was later removed from music streamers after copyright complaints.
“It’s similar to the way I watch a movie with CGI. It doesn’t impress me at all,” Sting told the BBC.
“I get immediately bored when I see a computer-generated image. I imagine I will feel the same way about AI making music,” the “Every Breath You Take” singer added. “Maybe for electronic dance music, it works. But for songs, you know, expressing emotions, I don’t think I will be moved by it.”
Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, CEO, U.K. Music had told a U.K. parliament’s science, innovation and technology committeeinvestigating the governance of AI last week that in the music industry, assistive AI had proved to be beneficial, particularly in identifying copyright infringement, audience analytics and for business models, but there was a “lot more concern” when it came to generative AI.
“The tools are useful, but we have to be driving them,” Sting said. “I don’t think we can allow the machines to just take over. We have to be wary.”
Sting was speaking to the BBC ahead of being inducted as a Fellow of the Ivors Academy on Thursday. He becomes the 23rd Fellow that the Academy has inducted in its 79-year history and past inducteed include Peter Gabriel, Paul McCartney and Kate Bush.
