James Blunt has been “humiliated” by AI versions of his own lyrics.
The ‘You’re Beautiful’ hitmaker has been experimenting with artificial intelligence out of curiosity, but he was mortified by how “generic” the AI’s creation was of lyrics in his own style.
He told the ‘I Never Thought It Would Happen’ podcast: “Every single one of us must have, having heard of [AI], typed in and then written ‘Give me a verse based on this, in the style of, in my case, a James Blunt lyric’.
“The truth is, either AI comes up with something very, very generic or my lyrics are just absolutely mundane.
“So AI has totally humiliated me whenever I’ve gone and asked it to impersonate myself. It’s taught me, if anything, not to use AI and [I] must do better.”
James, who can be incredibly self deprecating on social media and in interviews, did weigh in on the importance of seeing people’s “flaws” and “mistakes” in music to gives songs “character”.
He explained: “The thing about songwriting and music generally is, it is your flaws and your failings and your mistakes which make it have character.
“Character is something that is not formulaic or generic and even if I have written something before and I say ‘Let me write it in the style of me again,’ it will be boring to myself, I need to go out and test myself and push myself to do something different.
“And some of those things I would make by mistake and I don’t think AI can do that yet. I don’t think it can bring in true character flaws and mistakes at this stage.”
James recently opened up about writing ‘You’re Beautiful’ – his chart topping ballad focusing on a man accepting that his love for another woman will always be unrequited – and revealed it was based on a true story.
He told the Metro newspaper’s Rush Hour Crush column: “It’s a true story. She was an ex. She was with her new boyfriend – I didn’t know that he existed. But we walked past each other, we caught each other’s eye.”
He added: “We lived a lifetime in that moment but I didn’t do anything about it. I just went home and wrote a song about it and got a house out of it – the whole thing. So, I’m happy for them.”