![\"Producer](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/LDN-L-MISSYELLIOTT-PRE-0705-05.jpg\")
Timbaland, a four-time Grammy Award-winner, is the strategic advisor and public ambassador for the AI music creation platform Suno. (Thomas Dang)\nWelcoming \u2018Artificial Pop\u2019<\/p>\n
Is AI an invaluable tool for musicians \u2014 or an existential threat?<\/p>\n
Controversy about new technology has been a constant in the music industry since the first mechanically operated player pianos were patented in the late 1800s.<\/p>\n
But the level of controversy may now be reaching new heights, thanks to Suno, Udio and other AI music creation platforms that allow anyone to make nearly professional-caliber recordings \u2014 free or for a very low fee \u2014 with little or no human participation whatsoever.<\/p>\n
Since the debut of Suno and Udio in late 2023 and early 2024, respectively, AI-produced music has grown at a dizzying rate. The resulting sonic Pandora\u2019s box is changing, perhaps irrevocably, how music is created and consumed, valued and devalued.<\/p>\n
In November, the iHeartRadio network announced its new \u201cGuaranteed Human\u201d initiative and promised not to \u201cplay AI music that features synthetic vocalists pretending to be human\u201d or \u201cuse AI-generated personalities\u201d as on-air DJs.<\/p>\n
Also in November, \u201cWalk My Walk\u201d by Breaking Rust topped Billboard\u2019s Country Digital Song Sales chart, despite \u2014 or perhaps because \u2014 the song and the performer are both entirely AI-generated.<\/p>\n
In October, \u201cA.I.-native pop artist\u201d TaTa Taktumi\u2019s debut album, \u201cFaithful Soul,\u201d became a hit on iTunes (with a real-life human performer playing the role of TaTa for one of the album\u2019s videos).<\/p>\n
In September, the independent record label Hallwood Media signed a multimillion-dollar contract with the creators of Xania Monet, an AI-generated singer and image.<\/p>\n
Taktumi is the brainchild of Timbaland, the four-time Grammy Award-winning producer, songwriter, rapper and singer who is Suno\u2019s strategic advisor and public ambassador.<\/p>\n
Timbaland, a four-time Grammy Award-winner, is the strategic advisor and public ambassador for the AI music creation platform Suno. (Thomas Dang)
\nWelcoming \u2018Artificial Pop\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not just producing tracks anymore. I\u2019m producing systems, stories, and stars from scratch,\u201d Timbaland told Billboard magazine last year. \u201c(TaTa) is not an avatar. She is not a character. TaTa is a living, learning, autonomous music artist built with AI. \u2026 She\u2019s the first artist of a new generation. A-Pop (Artificial Pop) is the next cultural evolution, and TaTa is its first icon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, there is growing opposition to AI-generated music. It can \u2014 left unchecked \u2014 simulate the exact sound and style of young and established performers and songwriters alike, and their songs, without providing any credit or compensation to those artists.<\/p>\n
Everyone from Paul McCartney, Billie Eilish and Doechii to Miranda Lambert, Nicki Minaj and the members of Pearl Jam have expressed alarm, while Grimes, EDM star David Guetta and others have welcomed AI as a tool for music-making.<\/p>\n
San Diego\u2019s Jack Tempchin \u2014 a 2019 Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee who has written major hits for the Eagles, Johnny Rivers and other artists \u2014 embraced Suno to make his two new studio albums, \u201cThe Magic Mirror\u201d and \u201cAll Kinds of Love.\u201d<\/p>\n
Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees include Missy Elliott, Cat Stevens, San Diego\u2019s Jack Tempchin<\/a><\/p>\n He applauds Suno for the ease and speed \u2014 \u201ctwo minutes!\u201d \u2014 with which it can set his lyrics to music and transform them into a song. Suno devised all the vocals, instrumentation, arrangements, production, mixing and mastering for all of Tempchin\u2019s songs on both those albums.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the miracle of this technology,\u201d he said of Suno.<\/p>\n The company has positioned itself as a ChatGPT equivalent for anyone who wants to make songs. It does so through the automated (and almost automatic) composition of musical elements that have been fed into a massive database.<\/p>\n Tempchin also credits Suno for quickly reaching out to him when he contacted the company with questions about how to use its technology, which Suno has provided to him free of charge.<\/p>\n His enthusiasm is shared by Michael Hand, a lifelong musician who \u2014 full disclosure \u2014 I have known since buying a guitar amplifier from him in Frankfurt, Germany, when we were both junior high school students.<\/p>\n A lifelong musician now based in Central California, Hand regularly records in his home studio and releases his music online under the name Planthand. He is excited about how Suno enables him to now reimagine songs he wrote decades ago.<\/p>\n \u201cI have been roped in and am entranced by Suno,\u201d Hand said. \u201cI feed it lyrics of my songs, decide if the vocal should be male or female, and then use Suno\u2019s prompts to indicate the style, rhythms and instruments I want to use.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seamlessly integrates to your studio software. You want a gospel choir to sing your refrain? It takes maybe five minutes, and you can fashion the choir from a ragged backwoods church to a big city choir! And it sounds totally real because the learning machine has been fed a thousand gospel choirs. So, the AI knows nuances.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the first time, I can hear my old songs the way I envisioned them. It is very exciting and inspiring.\u201d<\/p>\n Other artists express consternation, not enthusiasm, about the potential of this new technology to upend the craft of making music and to diminish \u2014 or even eliminate \u2014 the need for human creativity and interaction.<\/p>\n \u201cAI is racing at us like a wildfire and legislation moves so slowly,\u201d said Alison Brown, a Grammy Award-winning banjo player and La Jolla High School alum.<\/p>\n She is the co-founder of Compass Records and an adjunct faculty member at Vanderbilt University\u2019s Blair School of Music. A Harvard Business School graduate, she is also the president of the Nashville chapter of the Recording Academy, under whose auspices the Grammy Awards are presented.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is such a critical moment for music creators,\u201d said Brown, whose 2025 album, \u201cSafe, Sensible and Sane,\u201d teams her with comedy legend and longtime banjo enthusiast Steve Martin.<\/p>\n Alison Brown, banjo star and MBA-holder, is on tour to promote her new album featuring Steve Martin, Kronos Quartet<\/a><\/p>\n Prior to a Nashville Recording Academy chapter leadership meeting last fall, Brown used Suno to create a bluegrass song.<\/p>\n \u201cI played it at the meeting and everyone was shocked at how great it sounded,\u201d she said. \u201cA lot of our members are very worried and we all have to figure out how to deal with it. I\u2019m really concerned about the misuse of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n Suno offers a Free Plan that enables customers to use the platform to make up to 10 songs a day, provided they are one minute or less in length. Its Pro Plan, priced at $8 a month, allows up to 500 songs that can be up to 8 minutes each in length. The Premier Plan, which costs $24 a month, ups the ante even higher to 2,000 songs. Both the Pro and Premier plans give users commercial rights to any new songs the users make using Suno.<\/p>\n But musicians do not appear to be Suno\u2019s target audience, as the company\u2019s CEO, Mikey Shulman, made clear in a 20VC podcast early last year.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not really enjoyable to make music now,\u201d he said in the podcast. \u201cIt takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software. I think the majority of people don\u2019t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.\u201d<\/p>\n Schuman has since sought to downplay his comments, which garnered near-instant blowback.<\/p>\n At San Diego singer-songwriter Tempchin\u2019s suggestion, the Union-Tribune reached out to Suno Chief Music Officer Paul Sinclair to discuss the company, its product and its goals. Sinclair did not respond to multiple email requests for an interview until several days after the deadline for this article.<\/p>\n By his own admission, Tempchin reacted with alarm when he first learned about Suno about two years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cLike every other musician, I said: \u2018I don\u2019t want anything to do with that\u2019,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI\u2019m a songwriter. I want to write my own songs. When Suno created the ability to put your own song in Suno and have it do a version of your song, that\u2019s when I became interested in it.<\/p>\n \u201cAlmost every musician is not open to it because it\u2019s replacing all musicians. For me as a songwriter right now, I put my songs in Suno and it\u2019s kind of like having a band record my songs \u2014 which I always did \u2014 except it\u2019s not real. So, that\u2019s OK for me right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Even so, Tempchin is well aware that the potential existential threat posed by AI extends well beyond musicians.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat about all the people that play on all the demos of songs and on all the records?\u201d he mused. \u201cThey\u2019re becoming irrelevant, just like doctors, lawyers and people in all kinds of professions. They will be replaced pretty soon by AI because it can do almost anything humans can do. And musicians are (among) the first in line to be replaced.<\/p>\n \u201cPretty soon, everybody \u2014 no matter what you do \u2014 is going to be replaced by these super intelligent machines. So, yeah, it\u2019s very concerning. But I\u2019m just making do with what exists in the world and getting my music out, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n The blurred lines created by AI have not gone unnoticed by the Recording Academy, under whose auspices the Grammy Awards are presented. Academy President and CEO Harvey Mason Jr. addressed the issue in a January interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Grammys, for now, are not going to be awarding or nominating any music that is written by AI in the songwriting category,\u201d Mason said. \u201cFurthermore, we will not be awarding a Grammy to any AI artists who perform songs in any performance categories.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving said that, AI does not disqualify someone from entering. If an AI artist sang a song that was written by a human, and it wins, we\u2019ll give the human a Grammy for the songwriting. And vice versa: If AI writes a song and a great singer sings the heck out of it and deserves a Grammy, they will be awarded one.\u201d<\/p>\n Grammy Awards honcho Harvey Mason Jr. discusses AI, DEI, the Dalai Lama, and more<\/a><\/p>\n A number of 2026 Grammy-winners were asked backstage by the Union-Tribune to weigh in on AI\u2019s role in music. Not one of them spoke in favor of it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are living in an age when human beings are not playing together and AI is kind of taking over.\u201d said jazz drummer, composer and band leader Nate Smith, who won two Grammys this year. \u201cIt\u2019s incumbent on the recording industry to protect the rights of recording artists.\u201d<\/p>\n Similar sentiments were expressed by Justin Gray, who won the 2026 Grammy for Best Immersive Audio Album for his aptly named \u201cImmersive.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTechnology is at its best when it serves the artist,\u201d Gray said.<\/p>\n Michael Romanowski, the mastering engineer on \u201cImmersive,\u201d nodded in agreement, adding: \u201cGo humans! We\u2019re humans and we make music for humans.\u201d<\/p>\n Veteran guitarist Nuno Bettencourt shared this year\u2019s Best Rock Performance Grammy win with singer Yungblud, bassist Frank Bello and keyboardist Adam Wakeman. Like audio engineer Romanowski, Bettencourt stressed the importance of humans in making music.<\/p>\n \u201cWith all the AI coming in, everybody\u2019s worried. Don\u2019t be,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is the biggest opportunity for rockers and rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, and anybody in any genre, to (stress) that real music, real songs, have a bit of danger in them. There\u2019s blood on the page, real stories that touch you. If you put yourself on the page, AI ain\u2019t touching that; nobody\u2019s reproducing that.<\/p>\n \u201cImperfection is where rock \u2018n\u2019 roll lives. Everybody\u2019s cleaning up the imperfections (with AI) \u2026 Anybody can do it in a studio; we all know that. But if you can do it on a stage, AI ain\u2019t messing with you there. That\u2019s when you separate (AI from) the real musicians, the real artists.\u201d<\/p>\n Remy Le Boeuf is this year\u2019s Best Instrumental Composition Grammy-winner. He emphasized that because he focuses on \u201ccreating music in a real space,\u201d AI \u201cdoesn\u2019t apply to what I do so much. And as a composer, I write everything on piano and sax.\u201d<\/p>\n Eight-time Grammy-victor Jon Batiste notched his latest win this year for \u201cBig Money,\u201d which earned top honors in the Best Americana Album category. By coincidence, the songs on \u201cBig Money\u201d are inspired by Batiste\u2019s growing concerns about capitalism and the diminishing value placed on spirituality, individuality and human interaction at a time when AI is becoming increasingly prevalent.<\/p>\n![\"Alison](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ljl-l-nugget-alison-brown.jpg\")
Grammy Award-winning banjo player, composer and band leader Alison Brown says she is \u201creally concerned about the misuse of AI\u201d in music. (File photo)
\n\u2018Really concerned\u2019<\/p>\n![\"Mikey](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/SUT-L-MUSIC-JACKTEMPCHIN-0322-3.jpg\")
Mikey Shulman is one of the founders of the AI music generating platform Suno. \u201cI think the majority of people don\u2019t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music,\u201d he said in an interview last year. (Robert F. Bukaty \/ AP)
\n\u2018It\u2019s replacing all musicians\u2019<\/p>\n![\"Jon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/SUT-z-MUSIC-AIMUSIC-0322-AP26033176509139.jpg\")
Jon Batiste poses in the press room with the award for best Americana album for \u201cBig Money\u201d during the 68th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026, in Los Angeles. (Richard Shotwell\/Invision\/AP)
\n\u2018A real threat\u2019<\/p>\n