TESTAMENT's CHUCK BILLY On Using A.I. In Art: 'In The Creative Part Of Evolution Of It, I Ain't Into It'

In a new interview with Doc Rock's Metal Shop 101 on Ragebreed Radio, TESTAMENT frontman Chuck Billy 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. Chuck said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, it's not really a creative… I guess it could be a creative tool, to help you write and work. You should use it to produce and then release something like that. But A.I. is in all our lives these days. I mean, I drove [around] San Francisco, Texas, New York, [and I was being driven in] driverless taxis. I was in L.A. last week where there's carts all up and down the streets delivering food, robots. And even in — I went to Sweetwater, which is a music distributor, back East, I went to their warehouse and their whole warehouse is robotic. So it's just pulling orders and selling and shipping stuff out all robotically."

Chuck continued: "So, it's here, man. It's taken jobs. But in the creative part of evolution of it, I ain't into it, because… Maybe if you're a young kid, you're trying to make a t-shirt, yeah, go ahead, make some A.I. But if you're gonna put it on your album and sell it to the public, I ain't down for that. Or try to make a song and sell it that way..."

He added: "It's like anything — you find a new tool to help your way get through something [and you] use it. So being an artist that's an artist, that's not being an artist, to me, really."

Chuck previously discussed A.I. last October in an interview with WOUB. He stated at the time: "A.I. is a big part of everybody’s life. A few months back, I rode a taxi in San Francisco and Texas that didn't have a driver. I went to a restaurant, and the busboy was a robot taking the plates off the tables and taking them to the dishwasher. The scary part, I thought, lyric-wise, is that this A.I. technology is about gathering as much information as you can. So what happens when it gathers so much information that it can almost decide for itself? Or have enough to retain it, where they think they know the answer?"

TESTAMENT recently announced the U.S. leg of its "Thrash Of The Titans" world tour. The trek, which will launch later this month, unites the band with fellow thrash legends OVERKILL and DESTRUCTION for one of the fiercest tours of the new year.

TESTAMENT's latest album, "Para Bellum", came out in October 2025 via Nuclear Blast. The LP was recorded with Juan Urteaga and mixed for the first time by Jens Bogren. The cover art was once again painted by Eliran Kantor.

When "Para Bellum" was first announced in August, it was accompanied by the official music video for the LP's first single, "Infanticide A.I.", directed by Joey Durango.