STONE TEMPLE PILOTS' ERIC KRETZ On Artificial Intelligence: 'I Hate It As An Aid For Songwriting. That's Just Disgusting.

In a new interview with Baby Huey and Chasta of the San Francisco radio station 107.7 The Bone, STONE TEMPLE PILOTS drummer Eric Kretz 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 (A.I.) algorithms and machine learning (M.L.) models. Asked for his opinion on the use of A.I. in art in general, Eric said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): " In art, visually it really stands out because you can… unfortunately, for graphic designers and stuff, it kind of puts them out. But for artists who, now to make a video, so if you have a band, a new band, you can make a really fantastic video because you can keep throwing in inputs to change the visuals and the ideas and 'accentuate this'. Of course, I hate it for music because it's just... It's just not real. It's, like, there's something always missing, like a little glitch of imperfection, a little glitch of a guitar being slightly out of tune in a certain chord. Like everything that we grew up with that you don't necessarily hear, but when you dig into the weeds on these songs, you're, like, 'Oh my God, listen to the bass. The bass is out of tune with the guitar in this song.' And then you get everyone around listening, like, 'Hear that note.' Like, 'Oh, yeah.' And right now you don't hear that with A.I., but they'll probably figure that out at some point and figure out how to really copy bands from the '70s."

Eric continued: "Yeah, it's tough. It's horrible for the creative process, but it aids in so many other areas — in the medicine world. And it's so new with us because it's so much smarter and quicker than hiring teams of people to do stuff. Yeah, I don't know. It's still so new. We're trying to figure it out. And I hate it as far as an aid for songwriting. I mean, that's just disgusting."

Eric went on to say that artificial intelligence is rapidly advancing and will soon impact nearly every industry, including the world of cinema. He said: "What's gonna happen with movies coming up? 'Cause now they can make movies within a couple of months with A.I. And I know the Hollywood film actors guild [Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists], they're really fighting how to control A.I. But you're gonna see A.I. movies with characters, and when people start falling in love with those characters that are completely A.I. generated, that's when it's gonna be weird, because then people aren't gonna know how to disassociate themselves with what A.I. can do. And like you said, A.I. doesn't have heartbreak, but it might be able to portray heartbreak to where people believe it. And that's when you go, 'Oh, this is fucked up,' 'cause it's not what we're about as humans, but it's gonna go in that direction just because of the money. It's so much cheaper to make movies like that."

STONE TEMPLE PILOTS currently features three original members — bassist Robert DeLeo, guitarist Dean DeLeo and Kretz.

Singer Jeff Gutt, a 50-year-old Michigan native who spent time in the early-2000s nu-metal act DRY CELL, among other bands, and was a contestant on "The X Factor", joined STONE TEMPLE PILOTS after beating out roughly 15,000 hopefuls during an extended search that began more than a year earlier.

Original STONE TEMPLE PILOTS singer Scott Weiland, who reunited with the group in 2010 after an eight-year hiatus but was dismissed in 2013, died in December 2015 of a drug overdose.

Chester Bennington, who joined STP in early 2013, departed nearly three years later to spend more time with his main band LINKIN PARK. Bennington committed suicide in July 2017.

STONE TEMPLE PILOTS released their first all-acoustic album, titled "Perdida", in February 2020. The disc was Gutt's second with STP. His recording debut with the group was on its self-titled seventh album, which arrived in March 2018.