King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard frontman says AI music is “dark and twisted”
Stu Mackenzie, the frontman of the Australian rock band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, has reflected on the state of AI music, admitting that he feels the industry is becoming “dark and twisted.”
Speaking newly to Charlie Warzel from The Atlantic, the musician reflected on the tumultuous year the band has had in the industry, after joining a mass exodus from Spotify to protest the investments of the company’s CEO, Daniel EK, in a firm that develops AI drone technology to be used within the military.
At the time, the band said, “We do not want our music killing people,” before adding, “We just removed our music from the platform. Can we put pressure on these Dr. Evil tech bros to do better?”
Following the removal of all their music and the subsequent re-uploading of their discography on Bandcamp, a new band popped up on Spotify in their place: King Lizard Wizard, featuring AI-generated imitations of their psychedelic rock, identical song titles, and AI-generated artwork.
Before touching upon this subject in the new interview, Mackenzie made it clear that he’s not anti-AI in every single use case.
He shared, “From the perspective of being a musician, I have conflicting ideas about it. With technology, there are certain elements of a lot of AI and generative things that I look at, I’m like, ‘that is so cool, that is amazing!'”
However, when the interviewer prodded about the surprising AI clone on Spotify, Mackenzie conceded, “We are doomed. It does feel like we are fucking doomed when that shit happens. Like, what do you do about that?”
He went on, “This ship has well and truly sailed. It is totally whack to be able to train the algorithm on artists’ work. Totally whack, totally cooked, totally fucking horrible.”
Despite his pessimism, Mackenzie can find humour in the situation: “When I listen to these King Gizzard AI artist songs, they are insanely funny to me. It is so dark, and twisted, and strange, and it’s so weird that it’s happening to us.”
Rather than cry, the musician admits, “All I can do is laugh. It’s insanely funny, but in the most twisted and dark way.”
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