Daniel Bedingfield thinks artificial intelligence (AI) is the future of music.
The ‘Gotta Get Thru This’ hitmaker has developed his own app, Hooks, which pairs songs with AI-generated videos and has also put together a new album comprised of songs generated by the technology as he thinks it should be embraced by creative people.
He told The Guardian newspaper: “AI is now here for ever. And so I think that there will be two paths: there’ll be the neo-luddite path, and then there’ll be everyone else, most of the planet, who thinks the music’s really good and enjoys it.
“It will be possible to continue without AI. But the question will be, why would you?
“Why fight it when you can have a whole gospel choir singing your chorus in two days’ time?”
Daniel believes AI can help children write “masterpieces” and wishes he’d had the technological advantages when he was a child.
He said: “I want a six year old to make a masterpiece.
“I could sing really well when I was six; I feel that my voice was as good at nine as it is now. I would have loved the chance to have made an album back then, without having to spend decades learning to play the instruments. That was the hard part, the brutal part.”
But the 44-year-old star acknowledged giving people the power to create music without musicians would also have a damaging impact on the industry.
He said: “Right now I’m grieving in my heart for 10,000 musicians, the pain that’s coming in the next 10 years, the depression, the homelessness. I think that’s coming.”
He ended with a stark warning.
He said: “We have to adapt or die.”