Jack Antonoff has been positioning his new Bleachers album, “Everyone for Ten Minutes,” as a project about “communication and how people interact with each other” — and he gave a fresh glimpse Wednesday into how he feels communication and creativity is being impacted by new tech shortcuts with artificial intelligence.
In an Instagram post titled “Update #13” and headlined “only my people can see me” (a lyrical motif on the new album), the frontman and pop star super-producer lambasted the “godless whores” who create art with A.I., writing that creating is an “ancient ritual” and that “without the process” the work is “nothingness.”
“So to everyone who is gassed up about the new ways you can fake making art, by all means drive right off that cliff,” he wrote. “We’re genuinely happy to see you go.”
Antonoff continued: “Generations coming will be engaging in the ancient ritual of writing, recording and performing as it comes to us from God. So as we embark on this strange detour where the bad actors will willingly reveal themselves through slop, and the struggling great will be further spread thin to make an honest living doing what they were put on Earth to do, we (myself, the band and frankly everyone I know) remain more dedicated than ever to reveal what comes from within. Writing music, recording and performing it — that’s it. Nothing more embarrassing than considering there is a way to optimize that holy process.”
The musician captioned the post, which appeared to be a series of “only my people can see me” missives shared on the platform in the lead-up to his album’s release, “ancient ritual :: only our people can see us sending love! how’s everyone been? hi from a plane.”
Antonoff, who aside from his Bleachers project has famously produced regular collaborations with Taylor Swift, Lorde, Lana Del Rey and others, has been a vocal critic of artificial intelligence from the jump. As the technology’s rise in the arts became more apparent back in 2023, for instance, the Grammy winner resisted the idea even then that A.I. would ever replace the craft of human creation.
“I don’t give a s–t about what it’ll do to the art, because I don’t think it’ll do anything,” he told Music Business Worldwide at the time. “To be in the presence of something made by a human is a huge part of the source. But I think it’ll f–k up the commerce for a lot of struggling artists. This is the problem with the business side of things; they can often figure out a way to ‘disrupt’ or break something, but what they can’t seem to ever figure out is, it was never broken. So, then we just go on these cyclical journeys and it’s exhausting and sad that the people who get f–ked the most on the journey are the artists themselves.”
In a Paste interview published Tuesday, Antonoff again reflected on the “destruction” of the artist community but added that “from a heart-and-soul point of view, I feel like there’s this amazing renaissance in me and the people I know.”
“It seems like the only people who are screaming their heads off that everything’s f–ked are just a bunch of old guys,” he said. “I crossed forty, and I’ve never been more excited about what I make, what my band makes, and what I hear coming out of young people. It’s so beautiful and brilliant.”
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