The Black Eyed Peas member defends artificial intelligence, calling the AI software the 'new renaissance in music' amid debate over its use in the industry.
- Jul 5, 2023
AceShowbiz - will.i.am has labelled AI as the "new renaissance in music." The Black Eyed Peas star, 48, becomes one of the music artists championing songs created by artificial intelligence software, with the songwriter claiming it can pen a tune just as good as he can.
"People have to decide what types of songs they want to write because, although I wrote songs like 'Boom Boom Pow' and 'I Gotta Feeling', the machine is going to write amazing versions or original 'Boom Boom Pows,' " he told ITV's "Good Morning Britain".
The tech enthusiast says AI can provide "social commentary" just like a human. He said, "It was a new song and it wrote it the way I would have written it." He continued, "It's a unique world that we're entering into. It's a new renaissance." However, he added, "The concern is what we do as people and the regulation that we put on folks that are building the models."
There are a number of musicians who feel AI is not a replacement for the artist because it has no emotions.
However, Grimes has gone one step ahead and created her own AI software, Elf.Tech, and asked fans to create songs using the tech as long as she gets 50 per cent of the royalties. The 35-year-old star - whose real name is Claire Elise Boucher - insists that if artists allow their voices to be used in AI projects, "beautiful things might come from it."
She told the "UTOPIA Talks" podcast, "Copyright sucks. I don't think art belongs to anyone. Why shouldn't everyone be able to use your voice or whatever?"
Like it just seems cool and exciting and then beautiful things might come from it, when people like big artists do these writing camps, they search the world for the best people to come in and write and they spend all this money doing it, and it's like you could just not spend that money and just give your voice out to the public. And like, you'd be drawing from a much wider pool, you know, like the outcome the net outcomes of great art would be."
By contrast, music legend Sting, 71, believes AI is going to be "a battle" for the music industry.
