STEVEN WILSON Struggles To Hear That It's Not Him Singing A.I.-Created Songs: 'This Is Uncanny, Almost Surreal'

Acclaimed British musician, singer-songwriter and record producer Steven Wilson has expressed his concern for the rise of artificial intelligence (A.I.) in the music industry. His comments come after several songs used A.I. technology to "clone" his vocals and create new tracks.

Wilson, who has been the driving force in a number of musical projects since the 1980s, the best known of which is the rock band PORCUPINE TREE, shared his sentiments in a social media post on Friday (July 19). He wrote: "For the last few years when I've been asked in interviews about the future of music, I've talked about a scenario I fully expect to happen whereby musicians wouldn't be needed anymore, and neither would pre-recorded tracks. Music will be made in real time for listeners by artificial intelligence depending on their requirements at that moment. You will choose the singer that you want to sing the song for you (Freddie Mercury, Aretha Franklin, John Lennon whoever),the subject matter you want them to sing about, and the musical genre. And it will generate that piece of music for you in real time, at which point you can choose to save it away for a future listen, share it with your friends, or erase it. For me personally things just took a big step further in that direction with several artificial intelligence created Steven Wilson tracks that have been brought to my attention. I don't know who created them or what their motivation was, but even I really struggle to hear that it's not me singing these songs. No matter what I might think about the quality of the music, this is uncanny, almost surreal.

"We're in the midst of a seismic change in the way music is made and how people engage with it," he added. "Do the majority even care that they aren't listening to a human being? The future bites indeed. Please let me know your thoughts."

Wilson isn't the only rock musician who has expressed his concern about the way A.I. could be incorporated in music in the future. Last September, Brian May from QUEEN told Guitar Player magazine: " I think a lot of great stuff will come from A.I., because it is going to increase the powers of humans to solve problems. My major concern with it now is in the artistic area. I think by this time next year the landscape will be completely different. We won't know what’s been created by A.I. and what's been created by humans.”

He continued: "I think we might look back on 2023 as the last year when humans really dominated the music scene. … It makes me feel apprehensive, and I'm preparing to feel sad about this.”

May added that he was worried about "the potential for A.I. to cause evil" in all areas, not just music. "I think the whole thing is massively scary," he said. " It's much more far-reaching than anybody realized — well, certainly than I realized."

During a July 2023 appearance on "Piers Morgan Uncensored", KISS bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons was asked if he was "excited or worried about artificial intelligence, particularly [as it relates to] the music business." He responded: "Music business aside, I am concerned about the lack of legislation. When you enter a new, let's say a new planet, you're about to land on a new [planet], well, clearly there's opportunity there, there are minerals and things — all kinds of opportunities. Without rules of the game… It's like playing sports without rules. Who's gonna do what? You need some rules that are kind and beneficial to mankind, womankind, transkind, all kinds of kinds. Okay, does that cover everybody?"

He continued: "The problem with A.I. is not… A.I. is here, whether you like it or not. So let's look at it smartly and let's pass legislation. A.I. creates a song using my voice, or what sounds like my voice, with a new song, and it sounds just like me and it definitely sounds like that kind of a thing. So when you buy it, who owns the copyright and the publishing, if A.I. did that? So, is it me, because it sounds like me? You could swear it was me. So these are uncharted [territories]."

This past May, GUNS N' ROSES guitarist Slash weighed in on a debate about people using an A.I. music generator as a tool to create melodies, harmonies and rhymes based on artificial intelligence algorithms and machine learning models. He told the Battleground Podcast: "I'm not super excited about this new development, only because I just know that people, for the most part, are gonna use it so much that it's gonna… For one, it's gonna be confusing and misleading. And then there's just gonna be too much of the same kind of look or sound for different things. I see it happening already.

"I'm the guy that likes to go into a studio and record a band live and do it analog, like [my new blues] record ['Orgy Of The Damned'], so the idea of A.I., I can't think of any application where it makes any sense to me for what it is that I do," he continued. "And I'm interested to see who comes up with something really great and unique and useful for me. But having A.I. reproduce anything or actually produce anything original in terms of music does not really thrill me. You can have it write lyrics, you can have it do anything but you doing the actual work and it doesn't thrill me."

Slash clarified that "the technology itself is a human achievement. I mean, it's amazing," he explained. "And technology all the way down the line is always showing some great possibilities with things, but it's how people use them, at the end of the day, as a mass application, that's where you've gotta start worrying."

In a May 2024 interview with Spain's Metal Journal, EXTREME guitarist Nuno Bettencourt stated about people using A.I. in music: "Everybody's worried and everybody's scared, and how it's gonna change anything. I love it, man. You know why I love it? I'm, like, bring it on. Do more of it. Because what that does, the people who do that and use it and think they can emulate emotion, the bigger, to me, rock and roll is gonna get. Because rock and roll, if you notice — look at all the technology that's happened since the 1930s, everything from telephones to television, to cell phones, to computers to synthesize everything else, what has changed in the guitar? Nothing. Zero. What has changed in a drum set? Nothing. What has changed in a bass guitar? Nothing. A microphone.

"Rock and roll, to me, is, is always there because it's broken," he explained. "It's not artificial. It's not perfect. It's all the imperfections, is what makes us shine. It's the danger of it. A.I. can do all you want — to write lyrics, to write song, to do whatever, even record, to do whatever — but it's always gonna sound sterilized, even when they try… Because even if they tried to sound like, let's say, I don't know, LED ZEPPELIN… LED ZEPPELIN didn't even sound like LED ZEPPELIN every night. Sometimes they were great, sometimes they were sloppy, sometimes it was amazing, and that's the danger, and that's the thing of rock and roll that you will never be able to capture with A.I. I don't give a fuck how much they're gonna try.

"You could see just with the [latest] EXTREME album [2023's 'Six'] — fuck EXTREME; it didn't even matter that it was EXTREME — you could see with just doing an album, people were just thanking us, 'Thank you for a rock album,' 'Thank you just for some rock and roll.' That's how starved and famine that we have. So, to me, the more sterilized pop music, which it's always kind of been already for the last 10, 20 years anyways, it's been very sterilized and very Auto-Tuned and very all that, the bigger rock and roll is gonna be.

"Sometimes I feel like Keanu Reeves in 'The Matrix'," Nuno added. "Rock and roll will always outdo any technology or anything that anybody throws at it, because, you know why? Getting in front of an audience will never — A.I. will never be able to step on stage and replicate what we do at any given second or moment, what we say, the sweat, the love, the passion, the audience. That relationship is untouchable by A.I. Period."

Last September, former MEGADETH guitarist Marty Friedman told Australian Musician editor Greg Phillips about people using A.I. in music: "There's gotta be something positive in it. And regardless of whether we're fearful of technology or not, it's gonna be a reality — period. So I think we can fight it all the way and there's been guys in the music business fighting analog and digital forever."

He continued: "It's kind of nostalgic to think of the days when everything was analog and you sat down and you listened to a whole album from beginning to end and it's wonderful and people can still enjoy that, but technology has allowed you and I to talk like this, technology has allowed Pro Tools to happen, which has created some of the best ideas for recording in history."

Friedman added: "We just can't fight it all the way because it's like spitting against heaven; it's not gonna mean anything. So A.I., I think its best years are yet to come. It hasn't really done anything that's kicked my ass yet. Of what I've seen, it's just been kind of cute little funny little mashups and stuff, nothing I'd want to sit down and listen to an album of, but technology and A.I. and all that stuff is a reality. It's not going away, for better or for worse. So the sooner we accept it and accept how we can not only live with it, but benefit by it, the healthier we can all enjoy our lives rather than being some old guy just saying, 'I hate this stuff.' It's really easy to fall into that, especially from people of a previous generation, because we know how good it was back then. There's a lot of crap now because of technology, and it's easy to hate on all that stuff, but it's not going away. So what's the benefit in being negative about it?"