Mick Jagger says AI is another tool for making music — as long as it’s used to create something original.
In an interview with Billboard on Thursday, the Rolling Stones front man shared his thoughts on AI in music and the evolving role of technology in the studio.
“You don’t really want to be imitated by AI, obviously,” Jagger said.
“I don’t want people just putting stuff out there that can sound exactly like the Rolling Stones. I think that’s obviously wrong,” he added.
But he isn’t opposed to the use of AI in the music-making process.
“If someone wants to make music by AI, I mean, go ahead. But it has to be original, you know. It has to be you — you have to have your own input and your own thoughts,” Jagger said.
AI can be used to create great music, but it can just as easily produce something terrible, depending on the input, he said.
Jagger added he sees AI as simply the latest step in the evolution of music recording technology, one of many changes he’s witnessed over his six-decade career. Before computers entered studios in the late 1970s, mixing tracks required several people working together, he said.
“In a way, if you’re clever, you can use that technology greatly to your advantage to make things go quicker, to make boring things go quicker,” Jagger said.
But the creative process itself still has to be human, he said.
“In my opinion, you’ve got to write the songs, you have to play them, and you play them live,” he said. “Of course, you can overdub, I’ve been doing overdub since 1965, that’s not new.”
Jagger acknowledged that some people are already using AI to generate songs from scratch in the style of established artists, including the Rolling Stones.
“But I mean, if you were any kind of creative person, you wouldn’t do that,” he added.
Jagger’s comments come after the band experimented with AI to de-age themselves in the music video for their latest single, “In the Stars.” In the video, released in May, AI was used to replace the faces of the musicians portraying the band with younger versions of the Rolling Stones.
“They’re not fake people in a fake room. All those drummers that you see are all real drummers and they’re all playing in a real room,” Jagger said. “The musicians are real musicians that look a bit like The Rolling Stones in 1968. The only thing was the faces.”
Jagger joins other artists debating AI’s place in creative industries.
In 2023, Jason Derulo said he doesn’t see AI as a threat to musicians yet because lyrics written by bots lacked “soul.”
“As we progress and as technology progresses, we’ll have more and more tools,” Derulo said. “Hopefully, the creativity of the product continues to grow with the technology as opposed to using technology as a crutch.”
In May, Jack Antonoff — the lead vocalist of the rock band Bleachers and longtime Taylor Swift collaborator —wrote an open letter criticizing “bad actors” who use AI in what he called the “holy process” of making music.
“So to everyone who is gassed up about the new ways you can fake making art, by all means drive right off that cliff,” Antonoff wrote in the letter. “We’re genuinely happy to see you go.”
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