Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan has unleashed an impassioned rant about the rise of AI, stating that it’ll never have a place in his creative process.
Artificial intelligence has been sneaking into the music industry in a variety of ways in recent years. There have been gear integrations, like the tone-generating tech in Positive Grid’s Bias X plugin, while Major record labels have been working on deals with AI firms that seem to benefit everyone except artists.
Paul McCartney and Brian May among other big-name artists, have spoken out aginst its use, and now Billy Corgan has lended his voice to the debate on the And The Writer Is… podcast.
“You didn't ask me, but I'm gonna make a declaratory statement,” he says (via Blabbermouth). “I patently refuse to use A.I. in my music creation. Because, to me, it's a deal with the devil. Whether it's the Promethean fire myth or whatever [referencing the titan who stole fire from Zeus to give it to humanity], to me, you're literally leaning into the thing that will destroy you.
“The pressure, the inspiration, the soul-searching is all part of the journey that a songwriter needs to go through,” he says. “It's good that a songwriter has a doubt; it's good that a songwriter has to think of a new chord that they haven't thought of. That's where the magic comes from.”
“We're flirting with the thing that will destroy us, as an economy, as a business, as a movement,” he says. “We're asking to be eradicated. We're giving them our information. God knows what the labels are doing. On a spiritual level, to lean into it is to ask to be wiped out.
“Over the last 20 years, we've seen the rise of the producer, the star producer, where the producer is almost more important than the artist, at least how the business animates itself. So now you're gonna see the rise of the guy who knows how to run the programs better than the other guy or girl.”
He adds, “This might be the most cataclysmic technological innovation in this town since the change from silence to talking pictures. A lot of people are gonna lose their gig, and there's gonna be a lot of new faces who are suddenly boy or girl wonder because they know how to press some fricking buttons.”
Corgan recently sat down with Guitar Player to talk about 30 years of the Pumpkins’ classic Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, discussing the gear and the stories behind its creation.
