DREAM THEATER's JORDAN RUDESS Is 'Very Excited' About Artificial Intelligence In Music

DREAM THEATER keyboardist Jordan Rudess and guitarist John Petrucci have weighed in on a debate about people using artificial intelligence (AI) to create music.

The two musicians, who are preparing to launch the "Dreamsonic" tour with DREAM THEATER, made their stance clear during an appearance on SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk" on Monday (June 5).

"It's a very big topic, and I personally am very excited about it," Jordan said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). "If people are being nice, that know about AI, like artists, musicians, graphic artists, they'll usually say, 'Oh, we can use it as a tool. And we've had tools before. And that's kind of a cool thing.' But the reality is that the technology — as it's really always done, but now maybe even more — opens up all these incredible possibilities for new levels of creativity that we haven't seen before. So, it's, yes, a tool, but it's a complete door opener and it kind of shatters what we know in a lot of ways. And it can be used in so many ways so we can hear and we can see things that we've never really seen or heard before.

"I myself am somebody who works not only in the audio domain, but I'm also really involved in the visual domain. I'm what's called an ambassador for a company called Lightricks, which is out of Israel, and they do incredible things with AI and photo and video. And I've also been involved in the AI part of music as well. And I'm very excited about it. How much of it will roll over into the DREAM THEATER world or even need to, that's a whole another question. We've actually been pretty open to the technologies that I bring in, although it doesn't completely take over, obviously, what we do, 'cause we've been doing this for a long time. But in general, [I'm] really, really excited about it. I think it's cool. People should pay attention to it. And as a creative person, I'm very involved in, let's say, the positive sides of it."

Petrucci said: "Well, you might have to start calling me Nostradamus, 'cause a few years ago I wrote a story called 'The Astonishing'. Jordan and I wrote the music to it. It was DREAM THEATER's record about, basically, the end of the world due to the fact that AI takes over and there's no need for humans to be creative anymore. And the NOMACs, or Noise Machines, take over and create this horrible music that starts controlling people. And it takes a musical savior named Gabriel to kind of get us out of it. So I predicted it. It's gonna happen. It's happening. That's my take. The NOMACs are coming."

Last month, AVENGED SEVENFOLD's M. Shadows said that he "would love to" have his voice cloned using artificial intelligence in order to create new songs. The singer, whose real name is Matt Sanders, was also enthused about the possibilities, saying that "AI can be incredibly useful" for songwriters. M. Shadows went on to say that AI gives fans the opportunity to use the work of their favorite acts as a machine learning library to create their own songs.

Pop singer Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, recently said she would "split 50% royalties on any successful AI-generated song that uses my voice".

"Same deal as I would with any artist I collab[orate] with. Feel free to use my voice without penalty," she tweeted.

SLIPKNOT singer Corey Taylor expressed his disdain for AI during a recent interview with "Loudwire Nights". He said: "It's cheap shit. I don't know what it is about human beings — they keep fucking opening Pandora's box for God's sake. It's scary, dude. I thought deep fake was bad and now here comes AI and all you do is teach this thing to do this or you type this thing to do that and all of a sudden it's just there. How much more do we want to lessen — and I mean lessen as in detract from — what we actually do as human beings? How much more do we want to take away from our own creativity? How much more do we want to make reality completely fucking pointless or better yet, how much do we completely want to devalue true talent, true creativity, true hard work, true persistence and heart to the point now that people are going to question whether it's you or not. It's so fucking ridiculous."

Photo credit: Rayon Richards / InsideOut Music