Ed Sheeran’s tough take on artificial intelligence

The advance of artificial intelligence has reached music. Whether it’s perfectly emulating the voices of great artists on songs they never recorded, composing entire albums from a simple algorithm execution or other more technical forms of exploration, technology has left many people worried about its limits. It is the case of Ed Sheeran.

In an interview with Audacity (via American Songwriter)the owner of hits like “Thinking Out Loud” It is “Shape of You” expressed strong opinions on the subject. Initially, she resorted to fiction to say that people should be aware of the possible problems caused by the indiscriminate use of technology.

“What I don’t understand about artificial intelligence is that for the last 60 years, Hollywood movies have been saying, ‘Don’t do this.’ And now everyone is doing it. And I’m like, ‘Haven’t you seen the movies where they kill us all?’

A point reinforced by Sheeran is that, in his view, artificial intelligence takes jobs away from people. Therefore, its evolution should be more cautious.

“Besides, I just don’t know why you need it – if you’re taking a human being’s job, I think it’s probably a bad thing. The bottom line of society is that we all do jobs. If everything is done by robots, everyone will be out of work.”

The AI ​​championed by Ed Sheeran

Finally, Ed Sheeran showed that it is not totally opposed to the idea of ​​artificial intelligence in our lives. The singer even mentioned a specific tool that has its value: the ChatGPT, virtual chatbot that offers quite articulate answers, although not always so precise.

“I just think the AI ​​is a little weird. But ChatGPT… Why not?”

The subject was raised again at another point in the interview. The singer cited fiction again and named a film that impressed him in that sense: AI – Artificial Intelligence (2001), directed by Steven Spielberg from a project by Stanley Kubrick.

“I watched this movie the other day and I was like, ‘Look! Spielberg and Kubrick were trying to tell us something’.”

Other opinions

In a recent interview with Kerrang! Radio (via Blabbermouth),the lead singer of Slipknot, Corey Taylor, spared no criticism of the use of artificial intelligence in music. For him, it’s just an accommodating evolution of other tools that correct out of tune voices or poor performances.

“To be honest, I don’t care about any of this. I don’t know what people are trying to prove. Are they trying to prove that computers can do things as well as people? Because if so, then what’s the point? an even worse example of technology replacing talent than I’ve been complaining about for years with Pro Tools, tuning and using the same sounds. And people keep saying, ‘Oh, isn’t that cool?’ No, it’s not cool. You are crazy?”

Another great contemporary heavy metal singer to voice his opinion on artificial intelligence recently is M. Shadows. The frontman of Avenged Sevenfold, however, completely disagree with taylor and says he would even be happy to lend his voice to technology to create music and performance from it.

Out of the heavy sound, the alternative idol Nick Cave demonstrated to have a position similar to that of Taylor. For him, AI has nothing to do with art, as composing music is a profoundly human act.