BRENT SMITH Says 'No A.I. Was Used In Making Of' SHINEDOWN's 'Ei8ht': 'We Want Music To Be Made By People With Souls And With A Consciousness'

In a new interview with Allison Hagendorf, SHINEDOWN singer Brent Smith confirmed that "no A.I. [artificial intelligence] was used in the making of" the band's upcoming eighth studio album, "Ei8ht". Brent explained (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "For us, we're not into it. We want music to be made by people with souls and with a consciousness. And look, man, I know some people will come at us and be, like, 'Yeah, but the technology…' I'll be, like, 'Cool. Have at it.' But to convince me that that's the direction you should go in — and this is just me — that's not... I don't wanna write with a computer. I wanna write with people. I wanna connect with human beings. And I think the moment that you start saying, 'Oh, but it's fine,' it's, like, until you're obsolete. And then what?"

Brent continued: "Look, man, if you worked for that ingenuity and that technology, and I think there's a lot of good that can come from that, but when I do see this ideology that people that are in a hierarchy just think that the public are sheep — I'm not into that either. And by the way, they're finding out, I think, in a lot of ways, too, at least from what I'm seeing, you thought that they wouldn't be able to figure out that it's fake.

"There's an energy between people that are alive," Smith explained. "And there's something incredible about when you put human beings in a room with each other and give them instruments, and you're pushing air, there is something electric that happens. And we made sure a lot of that… Like, loops — any kind of certain instrumentation that was done [on 'Ei8ht'], it wasn't like setting a program or something like that. [SHINEDOWN bassist and producer] Eric's [Bass] super specific about that, man. He may use something and pull something that gives him a sequence of something like that, but he'll go back into it and be, like, 'Okay, how do I make this for real?' And then, when he makes it for real, if he's using it as a template, it inspires him to do something else that takes him down a different road. So I'm not saying that programs and software isn't awesome. It's just you want somebody with a heartbeat controlling it."

Brent previously weighed in on a debate about people using an A.I. (artificial intelligence) music generator as a tool to create melodies, harmonies and rhymes based on artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and machine learning (ML) models during a February 2025 interview with Popdust. He said at the time: "The interesting thing about A.I. is you have to look at exactly what it stands for: artificial intelligence. One of the things about A.I. is that it's learning off of servers from inundated information that ultimately was created by a living human being. So every bit of knowledge it has, it's pulling from what somebody already documented. So that's an interesting thought process.

"When it comes to the health care community and it comes to A.I. being used to figure out how to cure diseases or how to fundamentally create treatments for the betterment of human beings and their physical health, that's a different animal. So, when you're looking at that, and it's hard because people have a process of going, 'Okay, well, when is the line when you're creating art and a machine is creating art or a computer is creating art and you're giving that computer….' Who owns the rights to that? And that's where people get a little nervous to talk about this, but the reality, how I look at A.I. as far as for the arts, and when I take a step back and look at it with a very wide lens, I think that human beings are connected to each other."

Smith continued: "Music is a very powerful part of our existence. There's a great quote by a philosopher in the 1800s, and the quote was, 'Without music, life would be a mistake.' It was actually said by Friedrich Nietzsche, which is probably one of the most profound quotes ever, 'cause we are connected to sound, we are connected to hearing a human voice or the pattern of a chord progression and how it lifts and how it like makes the hair on your arm stand up. There's a very real thing that's happening there. I haven't heard a song created by A.I. that's made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

"When you think about books like '1984' and you think about 'Ender's Game' and you think about 'Terminator' — we made movies about artificial intelligence, 'I, Robot', and it did not turn out very well. So it is weird to kind of see like this ideology of these robots actually becoming a real thing. And I will tell people, 'Go watch 'Terminator' and tell me how you feel afterwards.'"

"Ei8ht" will arrive on May 29 via Atlantic Records.

SHINEDOWN recently announced a massive "Dance, Kid, Dance Act II" world tour, taking the band to 11 countries across 54 dates, including stops throughout North America and Europe at some of the world's biggest venues. Joining SHINEDOWN on the trek will be COHEED AND CAMBRIA, BLACK STONE CHERRY, FROM ASHES TO NEW, DJ Rock Feed and THOSE DAMN CROWS on various dates.

Photo credit: Ebru Yildiz