Another former musician has admitted to embracing artificial intelligence — Dr. Dre, formerly of N.W.A, has admitted that he uses AI when he’s producing music.
In an interview with the New York Times the rapper, who’s actually called Andre Romell Young, joined the likes of David Guetta, Timbaland and Grimes in admitting to using AI in their works.
“It’s a new tool for creativity,” Dre said, “I’m embracing it. I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen with this.” He also repeated a common AI-user talking point, comparing it to drum machines or synthesizers and describing how much of a backlash there was against those now-common tools when they were first introduced.
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In the interview, Dr. Dre didn’t open up about how he actually uses AI. So it’s not clear whether he uses it to artificially create entire tracks or stems, like Boy George infamously did with his We Will Dance Again, or simply to isolate elements of existing tracks, as Paul McCartney famously did to remaster a Beatles song.
Given how many simple tech tools are labelled as AI, he could simply be using it to organize files.
Dre runs afoul of the streaming war
Streaming services are currently waging a war against the deluge of AI music which gets dumped on their platforms daily. According to Deezer, half of its uploads are AI-generated, and the issue has pushed the major platforms to lay down the law with AI slop.
Deezer has been busy releasing non-AI features and unveiling AI removal filters, while Qobuz recently spoke to us about its own plans to tackle AI, and Tidal doesn’t give royalties to AI music. Spotify has been much slower on the draw than its rivals, but even it recently unveiled an AI Persona tag to identify ‘artists’ who aren’t real people.
It was done best by Bandcamp, which simply and easily banned music which was “generated wholly or in substantial part by AI”. Now that‘s how you stick up for your users.
Given that he’s a known entity in the music world, with a large back catalog that predates AI, it’s very unlikely that Dr. Dre would fall afoul of these existing anti-AI rules. You’re not going to see an AI tag on California Love, or find Straight Outta Compton has been demonetized.
But the goalposts are constantly changing, as music streaming services cotton onto just how much listeners hate AI slop, and discover new ways of identifying and quashing artificial music. While Dre’s ambiguous AI use won’t break streaming service rules now, that could change as these services redefine what they allow.
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