Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys says AI could be useful in songwriting

Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys has spoken out about recent artificial intelligence (AI) tools when it comes to songwriting.

Recently, artificial intelligence (AI) has been at the forefront of society.  With the launch of ChatGPT, a Google-like search engine that, when presented with detailed tasks and/or commands, can perform them quite effortlessly; among others, has evolved to creating audio clips that sound like your favorite artists and can write just like them too.

Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys, an iconic synth-pop duo founded more than 40 years ago, has suggested that AI could be quite a useful tool throughout the creative and songwriting process.  His comments come just as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has warned against the use of AI companies, as they were violating copyrights en masse by using music to train their machines.

In his recent interview with the Radio Times, Tennant brings up valid points about AI and chooses to look at the service as more of a tool rather than a finish point.  During the interview, he recounts the Pet Shop Boys manager’s daughter asking ChatGPT to come up with a “Pet Shop Boys style song”.

“There’s a song that we wrote a chorus for in 2003 and we never finished because I couldn’t think of anything for the verses,” he said. “But now with AI you could give it the bits you’ve written, press the button and have it fill in the blanks. You might then rewrite it, but it could nonetheless be a tool.”

If you’re unfamiliar with the power of AI, click this link here to see a fully AI-generated song by Drake and The Weeknd.  Note, there are no human performers on this track.

Image Credit: Pet Shop Boys