Tyler, the Creator: “I’m always ahead of even myself, so AI will never catch up to me creatively”
The musician argued that AI will only be a “reference point” of his past work and won’t be able to keep up with him creatively.
Tyler, the Creator at the Los Angeles Special Screening of DREAM SCENARIO at The Bruin Theater on November 6, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Tommaso Boddi/Variety via Getty Images)
Amid the current AI debate within the music industry, artists have expressed a range of stances from curiosity to disdain and even considerable concern for the future of music if it’s eventually out of human hands. Tyler, The Creator, however, has expressed his own stance on it, and from the sounds of things, he appears unperturbed by the rapid advantages in technology.
The musician says in a new interview that he feels he is “always ahead of even myself” which means that in his mind, “the AI will never catch up to me creatively”.
On a recent episode of De La Soul’s AOI podcast, the artist says he reckons AI can’t outpace “the superpower that we have” in terms of human creativity that “keeps things unique and moving forward”.
“Why have a computer do that special power that us as humans have?” he questions. “[We should make it] clean up the ground or for getting the cancer cells out of us. What? Making a beat? Like, no. Stop.
“It might have its perks but I’m always ahead of even myself, so the AI will never catch up to me creatively. It’ll only be a reference point of what I already did, not where I’m going because it’s not me.”
In other AI news, YouTuber Rick Beato also recently weighed in on the subject and admitted he had mixed feelings on the emergence of the technology.
“There will be things that people like, that are created by AI, and there will be people 20 years from now, [saying], ‘Oh, I much prefer AI Rolling Stones than [the original] Rolling Stones. That’s just gonna be a thing.”
He continues, “People, companies – whether it’s Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, Warner Music, UMG, Sony – are gonna have all their own AI-generated music. Those are the downsides. Who’s gonna hold the copyright on it? What are the songs that the models are gonna be trained on? I believe, in the future, you’ll go to Apple Music or Spotify, you’ll see The Beatles, and The Beatles AI; Led Zeppelin, and Led Zeppelin AI.”
