To license your music to AI or not? That’s quickly becoming one of the biggest questions facing artists today.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, the debate around generative AI in music is impossible to ignore. Some see it as a powerful creative tool – jazz legend Pat Metheny, for instance, has described it as part of a “wonderful array of tools” available to modern musicians – while others fear it could erode the very human core of songwriting.

Just recently, Eurythmics co-founder Dave Stewart called AI an “unstoppable force”, arguing musicians should “bow to the inevitable” and license their music to generative AI platforms. Gary Numan, however, isn’t buying it.

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Speaking on the I’m ADHD! No You’re Not podcast, Numan took a firm stance against licensing his catalogue to AI and laid out exactly why he thinks the current hype won’t last.

“The thing about AI from my point of view is, when you’re listening to a human, a song written by a human, you’re listening to that person’s experience, and that’s why it resonates with people,” the singer says. “It’s a shared experience, whatever it might be: a love song, one of my silly things about robots, whatever.”

“When you’re listening to AI, no matter how beautiful the music is – and if it isn’t already, it will be – it will be stunning. The artwork I’ve seen is the most stunning artwork I’ve ever seen… The music would be amazing. But what you’re listening to is a learned copy of a human experience. It’s not real.”

Numan reckons AI acts will grab everyone’s attention for a time – much like the ABBA Voyage shows – but that eventually, listeners will yearn for the authenticity of human artists.

“To begin with, the fascination for AI would dominate everything, and everybody will be willing to excuse the fact that it looks amazing and that I don’t care about the human content,” he explains. “[But] I think over time, if we’re around long enough, it will go full circle and people will want to go back to sharing a human experience rather than just brilliantly copied one.”

This philosophy underpins Numan’s approach to his creative process.

“I don’t use AI for anything. I don’t need it to help me write letters. I think I write perfectly well,” he says. “I certainly don’t want it to write lyrics because that’s the very essence of what a song is about. It might be easier. It might be good to do it like that, but fuck it – I’m willing to spend a day or two writing a lyric that means something to me. And it’s really important. Musically, although I struggle and I’m worried all the time whether it’s good enough, it has to be mine.”

Listen to the full interview below.

The post Gary Numan thinks AI music hype is short-lived: “It will go full circle and people will want to go back to sharing a human experience rather than just brilliantly copied one” appeared first on MusicTech.