Damon Albarn: “AI can only make soulless music”

A few weeks ago, interviewed by “Uncut”, Damon Albarn said he was busy creating the soundtrack for Luca Guadagnino’s next film, “Artificial”, dedicated to the history of OpenAI – the ChatGPT company – and its CEO Sam Altman. In the days in which “The Mountain”, the new Gorillaz album, is released, Albarn revealed new details about the project, including his doubts about artificial intelligence: “I think there was a silly moment when big companies thought that AI would make their lives easier and make them more money. Well, that’s not the case. I don’t think it’s possible for AI to make music with soul.”

He then explained: “I’ve been quite involved with AI because I’m currently composing the soundtrack for a film called Artificial, which is about the founders of ChatGPT,” he told The Needle Drop magazine. “So I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. Music and art aren’t supposed to be easy. When they become easy, they lose meaning. In a way, it’s the things you don’t see or hear that make it art. It’s a strange intuition that the listener has, that captures the path that the artist went through to achieve that certain thing, with the tone of voice, etc. You can’t replace that.”

This is the first collaboration between Albarn and Guadagnino, after Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails had composed the music for the director’s previous films: Bones and All, Challengers, Queer and After the Hunt.