“You cannot bring people back from the dead and believe that they would stand for that,” singer says in new interview
Sheryl Crow railed against artificial intelligence in music — specifically Drake’s “hateful” use of Tupac Shakur’s voice in a recent diss track — in a new interview.
Speaking to the BBC about AI — a subject Crow previously expressed her concerns about on the single “Evolution” — the Rock Hall-inducted singer called the technology a “slippery slope” but especially criticized when it’s employed to mimic the voice of other artists.
Crow targeted Drake’s “Taylor Made Freestyle” as an example of AI gone wrong. The diss track was aimed at Kendrick Lamar and featured an AI Tupac verse, resulting in a cease-and-desist from the Shakur estate and, ultimately, the track’s deletion.
“You cannot bring people back from the dead and believe that they would stand for that,” Crow told the BBC.
“I’m sure Drake thought, ‘Yeah, I shouldn’t do it, but I’ll say sorry later.’ But it’s already done, and people will find it even if he takes it down. It’s hateful. It is antithetical to the life force that exists in all of us.”
Crow also shared an anecdote where a female songwriter she knows used AI technology trained on John Mayer’s voice to create demos that sounded as though they were recorded by that singer.
“I know John, and I know the nuances of his voice,” Crow said. “And there would be no way you’d have been able to tell that he was not singing that song.”
Crow previously tackled the issue of AI on her single “Evolutin” back in February. “Stephen Hawking worried that A.I. would replace humans,” Crow said in a statement at the time. “As a mom, I want to leave a better world for my children, a healthier planet — is A.I. going to be a benevolent partner in these goals or not? It’s unsettling, and this song deals with those anxieties.”