AI tools that generate songs have brought Nick Cave back to a question he’s written about before: whether art can be separated from the person who makes it. In a post on The Red Hand Files, the Bad Seeds singer-songwriter argued that these platforms let people dispense with the creator altogether.
“Perhaps, our final, most soul-destroying humiliation” — Nick Cave
Cave’s objection centers on what happens when human creative effort becomes optional. “They mock creation itself by rendering humanity unnecessary, taking the fruits of human striving and reducing them to mere products,” he wrote.
He also connected the technology to efforts to reject artists deemed problematic, arguing that song generators promise to eliminate artists entirely.
His criticism comes with uncertainty about AI’s wider consequences. Cave said it might “save the world, annihilate it, or do something in between.” He’d previously told ChatGPT to “f*** off and leave songwriting alone.”
He’s also described an experience that softened his position on AI as an artistic tool. Filmmaker Andrew Dominik used the technology to animate archival still images for a video marking the 40th anniversary of Cave’s song Tupelo.
“As I watched Andrew’s surreal little film, I felt my view of AI as an artistic device soften,” Cave said. “To some extent, my mind was changed.”