Brian May, 2019.
Photo: FilmMagic, Jeff Kravitz. All rights reserved.
After John Lydon and Nick Cave already expressed their opinion on artificial intelligence, Queen guitarist Brian May has now joined. In a recent interview, he expresses his concerns about the use of AI in music, describing the prospects as “extremely scary.”
“Right now my biggest concern about it is creatively,” he tells Guitar Player. “I think that this time next year everything will look different. We will no longer know which way is up and which is down. We won’t know what was created by AI and what was created by humans.”
May continues: “It’s all going to get very muddy and confusing and I think 2023 will be the last year where humans really dominated the music scene. I really think it could be that serious and that doesn’t make me happy. It worries me and I’m preparing to be sad about it.”
The guitarist supports the use of AI when it comes to solving humanity’s problems. However, he remains fearful about the possibility that the programs will be exploited for evil purposes. “The potential for AI to create evil is obviously incredibly great — not just in music, because in music no one dies — but people could die if AI becomes involved in the politics and world domination of various countries,” says May.
“I think the whole thing is extremely scary,” the Queen member concludes. “It’s so much more far-reaching than we thought. Well, more than I thought anyway.”