Ed Sheeran has shared his thoughts on the use of artificial intelligence in music, calling the technology “weird”.
The ‘Subtract’ singer-songwriter spoke about AI during a recent interview with Audacy, which took place at the Hard Rock Hotel in New York City.
Towards the end of the conversation, Sheeran was asked whether he had seen any of the music-orientated AI projects that are becoming increasingly popular across social media.
“What I don’t understand about AI is like, for the last 60 years, Hollywood movies have been telling you, ‘Don’t do it’. And now everyone’s doing it,” he responded. “And I’m just like, ‘Have you not seen the movies where they kill us all?’”
Sheeran continued: “Also, I just don’t know why you need it – if you’re taking a job away from a human being, I think that’s probably a bad thing.
“The whole point of society is we all do jobs. If everything is done by robots, everybody’s gonna be out of work. I just find AI a bit weird. But ChatGPT… fucking why not?”
Later, Sheeran said that he owns the teddy bear from Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence in his collection of movie props. “I watched that the other day and I was like, ‘See! Spielberg and [Stanley] Kubrick were trying to tell us something’.”
You can watch the video interview in full below.
Earlier this year, a fake “lost” Oasis album was created by AI before Paul McCartney said the tech had allowed him to make a “final” song by The Beatles.
Bad Seeds frontman Nick Cave previously described the concept as “a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human”, and later stated that he wanted AI platforms like ChatGPT to “fuck off and leave songwriting alone”.
Other artists to have weighed in on the issue include Noel Gallagher, Sting and Grimes. The latter singer has given fans permission to use her voice on AI-created tracks, and suggested that Spotify introduce a section for music generated by the tech.
Elsewhere, Blur frontman Damon Albarn called music produced by artificial intelligence “absurd”. He said: “If the AIs are the future of music, we’re gonna need better drugs to get us through it.”
Back in June, the Recording Academy announced a new rule that bans music created solely by AI from being eligible for a Grammy award.
Ed Sheeran, meanwhile, is currently on the North American leg of his ‘Mathematics’ world tour.