Billy Corgan says AI is a 'demon,' refuses to use it

Billy Corgan won't use AI. In a podcast with Ross Golan, Corgan said that he absolutely refuses to use it. "I refuse, I patently refuse, to use AI in my music creation. Because to me it's a deal with the devil, simple." Corgan suggested that fans and listeners may eventually find value in humanity of human-made music.

His argument is that "we're flirting with the thing that will destroy us as an economy, as a business, as a movement. We're asking to be eradicated."

"You know," he told Golan on the And the Writer Is... podcast, "whether it's the Promethean fire myth or whatever, to me it is, you're literally leaning into the thing that will destroy you, period. So that's why I'm not going to mess with it, because the pressure, the inspiration, the soul searching, the 'I'm not sure I got anything else to say,' that's all part of the journey that the songwriter needs to go to, okay.

"Now, if it was the guy in my band, or somebody I met through my friend, Shooter Jennings, or whatever, and we're writing songs together, that's a real person with real feelings and real blood coursing through their veins, and maybe someday we're going to argue about a publishing split, okay, but if we're arguing means there's something of value that we're arguing over. If my new buddy, my new running buddy is pick your app or app to still be made. Okay, that shits never gonna end.

"I'm saying it's good that a songwriter has a doubt, it's good that a songwriter's not sure they have anything left to say, it's good that a songwriter has to think of a new chord they haven't thought of. That's whare the magic comes from and until that is proven otherwise I'm sticking with the game I'm in."

"Songwriting is still a capitalistic business," he said. "Don't care where you come from, we're gonna run with it because it's gonna make people some money. The publishing, the whole business, is still predicated on who writes them songs. That's it. Now you want to be one of those stars with like 27 writers. You do what you got to do. Like people are asking me about Suno and all this stuff.

"I got a Suno in my brain. I don't need Suno to write my songs."

"What really matters, is are the songwriters, the organic songwriters, the 100 percenters... going to be able to innovate to keep pace with the demon on the other side of the room?" Billy Corgan on AI.

He recalled how he started making music when he was 15, using a 4-track and trying to figure out what Robert Smith of The Cure was doing in his songs. The AI, he said, will just give musicians whatever has been culled from its internet archive, and is not capable of innovation.

Corgan also gave advice to artists trying to make work today, saying "If you are an idiosyncratic artist and you have a vision, you have to absolutely build your own world and you have to build a world that cannot be easily imitated."