Zakk Wylde has once again weighed in on the growing debate surrounding AI-generated music, dismissing fears about the technology replacing real artists.
In a new interview with Qobuz, the Black Label Society frontman and longtime Ozzy Osbourne guitarist argued that artificial intelligence will never replicate the originality of human musicians. Which is true – AI is always going to be the pale, lesser vomit of actual art – though its popularity and the art-hating sycophants who use it aren’t fucking off.
“To me, it’s no big deal, ’cause whoever the artist is that you love, whether it’s Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath, you’ll never be able to replace what’s gonna come out of Tony Iommi‘s riffs, what Geezer Butler‘s gonna write lyrically, what Bill Ward‘s gonna play, what melodies Ozzy Osbourne‘s gonna sing, because they’re creating it.
“But I get it. I mean, if A.I., it listens to all of Ozzy‘s melodies and gets a feel for what Ozzy‘s style is, and then hears Tony‘s riffs and then it could hear the tendencies Bill plays, certain fills he does, and the way Geezer plays bass, and it listens to the lyrics, and it takes in the lyrics of what Geezer [writes] about — a lot about religion, about war, about things like that — and it comes up with something [new]. It’d be no different than a songwriter trying to come up with something that Black Sabbath would write.”
Wylde went on to suggest that concerns around A.I. are overblown, framing the technology as more of a tribute than a threat: “Everyone’s terrified of [A.I.]. I just think you can’t take away what’s in the mind of Jimi Hendrix, what Jimi Hendrix is gonna write.
“So you can try and emulate it. All I look at it is the computer is just giving a compliment to the sound of whatever band that they’re trying to [emulate], like The Eagles or something, that’s gonna write a song that’s like a ‘Desperado’ kind of song, or ‘Hotel California’. No, it doesn’t bother me, ’cause I’m still gonna buy the record from The Eagles.”
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