Dr Dre uses AI in the studio. My guess is plenty of producers do, but most would rather not put it in the credits.
Deezer counted AI tracks as more than half of new uploads at peak in June. They made up between 1% and 3% of listening, and Deezer classed up to 85% of their streams as fraudulent. So far, fully generated music has looked a lot like streaming spam.
The New York Times asked Dre and Jimmy Iovine about AI in music. Dre said the critics sounded like the people who objected to drum machines and synthesisers. The reporter then asked whether he uses it himself.
"Yes, I'm using it. Again, as a tool to see what it would do with what I just did."
Dr Dre, The New York Times
Iovine called them "closet AI producers". I suspect he knows a few.
Producers have a reason to keep quiet. Use AI on one synth part and people may decide you typed a prompt, went for lunch and called the result an album.
Dre's reputation can probably take it, and now other producers can point at him if they're asked. "Dre is doing it. Go bother him instead."
Tyga has already shown why a producer might stay quiet. Earlier this month he said AI helped with some of the 1980s synths and guitar parts on $tarface. The writing and vocals were his. He'd avoided talking about the process because, as he put it, magicians don't explain their tricks.
It went about as well as you'd expect. Pitchfork gave the album 0.0 and Doja Cat mocked him. She called it an AI album. Tyga ended up explaining which parts he'd written and performed. I'd keep quiet too.
Grimes was open about it much earlier. She licensed an AI version of her voice for approved releases. David Guetta used a synthetic Eminem vocal in a live experiment that he didn't release.
Timbaland built a company around AI. Its artist TaTa Taktumi signed with Pacific Music Group this year. Dre mentioned using AI only after the reporter asked.
I don't think Dre's comments let AI companies off the hook on copyright. An Artist Rights Alliance letter, signed by more than 200 artists including Billie Eilish and Stevie Wonder, went after training without permission and voice imitation. It also warned about replacing musicians or reducing their pay. The letter said responsible AI could still help people make music.
Paul McCartney opposed UK plans that would have made creators opt out of AI training. The Beatles also used machine learning to finish Now and Then. Peter Jackson's team pulled John Lennon's vocal out of an old home recording, then McCartney and Ringo Starr completed the song.
Nick Cave managed a bigger swing. He called a ChatGPT song written in his style a "grotesque mockery of what it is to be human" in 2023. Two years later, Andrew Dominik showed him an AI-animated film for Tupelo. Cave said it softened his view of AI as an artistic device.
The Artist Rights Alliance wants AI companies to ask before using other people's work.
Now we'll see whether Dre gets the same backlash as Tyga, or whether other producers start admitting it too.
At a CNN and Variety town hall in February, Matthew McConaughey told actors to protect their voices and likenesses from AI, "There's too much money to be made, and it's too productive."