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“People in 20 years from now will say, ‘I much prefer AI Rolling Stones to the real Rolling Stones’”: Rick Beato on the future of artificial intelligence
“In the future, you’ll go to Apple Music or Spotify, you’ll see The Beatles, and The Beatles AI.”
Image: Daniel Knighton/Getty Images
Rick Beato isn’t short of an opinion or two, whether he’s discussing Rolling Stone’s list of the best guitar players or U2’s Las Vegas residency, and AI is the latest issue for him to speak on.
In an interview with News 8 WROC, the YouTuber, who has testified in front of a Senate committee about the idea of regulating AI, says, “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.’
“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.”
However, he does speak on the positives of AI, too. He says, “One of [the benefits] is on the display in the new Beatles song they did [Now and Then], where you can use AI to separate things like [the track where] John Lennon sang and played the piano. You can separate the voice from the piano without any artefacts, which you could never do before. You can’t hear any of the piano in his voice, and you can’t hear any of his voice in the piano. That’s a really great thing.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Beato discusses changes in contemporary musical trends. He suggests that, from analysing the charts, country and rock are both becoming more popular, with hip-hop seeing a decrease in popularity. He says, “I noticed on some of the Spotify countdowns that I do, that there’s a lot more country songs, more rock songs, more songs with organic instruments like guitar, less autotune, less programmed beats.”
You can check out the full interview here:
To see more from Rick Beato, check out his official YouTube channel.