COREY TAYLOR On Artificial Intelligence: ‘I Don’t Like Pondering The Fact That There’s A Program That Can Mimic Anything’

SLIPKNOT frontman Corey Taylor has once again weighed in on a debate about people using artificial intelligence (AI) to create fake tracks and recreate artist voices.

The 50-year-old singer, who has spent the last few months promoting his second solo album, “CMF2”, made his stance clear during an interview with Australia’s Spotlight Report.

He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “It’s interesting, man. It’s kind of like that’s the buzz thing right now that everybody’s talking about.

“Obviously, I don’t like pondering the fact that there’s a program that can kind of mimic anything, because we have such a hard time with reality these days. Now we’re creating or we’re instigating or we’re encouraging this thing that can make it so we have no idea what reality is. And I think instead of concentrating on that, we need to be concentrating on the things that are real and concentrating on the relationships that we need to heal with people when it comes to beliefs or conspiracy or hatred or violence. I mean, we need to be concentrating on that instead of worrying about an engine that can create a BEATLES song from scratch. That’s the thing that we should be really kind of putting energy into and less into the technology that may or may not tear the fabric apart.”

In other news, Corey has shared a video recap of his appearances at this year’s Good Things festival in Australia, which were held December 1, December 2 and December 3 in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, respectively. Check it out below.

Taylor previously discussed his disdain for AI during an interview in May with Kerrang! Radio ‘s Loz Guest. At the time, he said: “I don’t care for any of that crap, dude, to be honest. I don’t know what people are trying to prove. Are they trying to prove that computers can do things just as good as people? Because if so, then what’s the point? It’s an even worse example of technology taking over for talent than what I’ve been ranting about for years with Pro Tools and tuning and using the same sounds… And people keep going, ‘Oh, isn’t it cool?’ I’m, like, no, it’s not cool. What are you — out of your mind? What? Suddenly now we have no talent? The only thing that we’re gonna get that sounds cool and new is from something that doesn’t even exist? Screw you, man!”

He added: “Every time people get stoked in front of me about AI, I go, ‘You’re not talking to the right person. You need to go over that way and talk to a dipshit who doesn’t care.’ ‘Cause I hate it. I can’t stand it.”

Also in May, Corey called artificial intelligence “cheap shit”, telling “Loudwire Nights”: “I don’t know what it is about human beings — they keep fucking opening Pandora’s box for God’s sake. It’s scary, dude. I thought deepfake was bad and now here comes AI and all you do is teach this thing to do this or you type this thing to do that and all of a sudden it’s just there. How much more do we want to lessen — and I mean lessen as in detract from — what we actually do as human beings? How much more do we want to take away from our own creativity? How much more do we want to make reality completely fucking pointless or better yet, how much do we completely want to devalue true talent, true creativity, true hard work, true persistence and heart to the point now that people are going to question whether it’s you or not. It’s so fucking ridiculous.”

As for the AI-generated song that featured Chester Bennington‘s voice singing SLIPKNOT‘s “Snuff”, Corey said: “As honored as I would be to have something real like that from Chester, it’s just not right. People have really got in the habit of stepping on graves and they don’t care. That’s what bothers me the most, this true apathy for anything other than their own needs. How fucking selfish do you need to be?”

In April, Universal Music had a song called “Heart On My Sleeve”, which used deepfaked vocals from their artists Drake and The Weeknd, removed from the streaming services, claiming in a statement that “the training of generative AI using our artists’ music” was “a violation of copyright law”.

This past spring, AVENGED SEVENFOLD‘s M. Shadows said that he “would love to” have his voice cloned using Artificial Intelligence in order to create new songs. The singer, whose real name is Matt Sanders, was also enthused about the possibilities, saying that “AI can be incredibly useful” for songwriters. M. Shadows went on to say that AI gives fans the opportunity to use the work of their favorite acts as a machine learning library to create their own songs.

Pop singer Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, said she would “split 50% royalties on any successful AI-generated song that uses my voice”. “Same deal as I would with any artist I collab[orate] with. Feel free to use my voice without penalty,” she tweeted.