Ed Sheeran on AI: ‘Have you not seen the movies where they kill us all?’

Ed Sheeran finds AI “weird” and fears reality could turn into one of the movies where AI gets too clever and decides to wipe out humanity.

The 32-year-old pop star believes it’s a bad idea to replace human jobs with robots, however, he doesn’t think much harm can be done by the AI chatbot, ChatGPT, which is developed by OpenAI and can make songs that song like any artist, understand and generate human-like responses to questions, pen creative writing and assist with everyday tasks.

In an interview on Audacy, Ed said: “What I don’t understand about AI is like, for the last 60 years, Hollywood movies have been telling you, ‘Don’t do it’. And now everyone’s doing it.

“And I’m just like, ‘Have you not seen the movies where they kill us all?'”

He added: “Also, I just don’t know why you need it – if you’re taking a job away from a human being, I think that’s probably a bad thing.

“The whole point of society is we all do jobs. If everything is done by robots, everybody’s gonna be out of work. I just find AI a bit weird. But ChatGPT… f****** why not?”

Ed having his say comes days after Damon Albarn quipped that “we’re gonna need better drugs” to get through an age of AI.

The 55-year-old Blur frontman slammed AI versions of the ‘Parklife’ group’s songs sung in the vocal likeness of Frank Sinatra, Michael Bublé and Snoop Dogg.

Asked about the rise in Artificial Intelligence music, Damon was quoted by The Sun newspaper’s Bizarre column as saying: “It’s absurd. Anyone who has so much time to sing songs through a Michael Bublé filter and put them on the internet is a f****** idiot. If the AIs are the future of music, we’re gonna need better drugs to get us through it!”

Many artists have raised their concerns about the lack of emotion in AI, including Nick Cave, 65, and Sting, 71, the latter of whom believes it will be a “battle” for the music industry.

However, 35-year-old experimental artist Grimes – who has gone as far as to create her own AI software – and will.i.am are pro-AI.

The Black Eyed Peas star, 48, is one of the music artists championing songs created by artificial intelligence software, with the songwriter claiming it can pen a tune just as good as he can.

He told ITV’s ‘Good Morning Britain’: “People have to decide what types of songs they want to write because, although I wrote songs like ‘Boom Boom Pow’ and ‘I Gotta Feeling’, the machine is going to write amazing versions or original ‘Boom Boom Pows’.”

The tech enthusiast says AI can provide “social commentary” just like a human.

He said: “It was a new song and it wrote it the way I would have written it.”

Will continued: “It’s a unique world that we’re entering into. It’s a new renaissance.”

He added: “The concern is what we do as people and the regulation that we put on folks that are building the models.”