Mick Jagger says that AI is another tool for making music, as long as it is used to create something original.

In an interview with Billboard on Thursday, the Rolling Stones frontman shared his thoughts on AI in music and the changing role of technology in the studio.

“Obviously, you don’t want the AI ​​to imitate you,” Jagger said.

“I don’t want people to just post things that might sound exactly like the Rolling Stones. I think that’s obviously wrong,” he added.

But he is not opposed to the use of AI in the music creation process.

“If someone wants to make music with AI, I mean, go ahead. But it has to be original, you know. It has to be you, you have to have your own input and your own thoughts,” Jagger said.

AI can be used to create good music, but it can also produce something terrible, depending on the input, he said.

Jagger added that he sees AI as simply the latest step in the evolution of music recording technology, one of many changes he has witnessed over his six-decade career. Before computers entered studios in the late 1970s, mixing tracks required several people to work together, he said.

“In a way, if you’re smart, you can use that technology to your advantage to make things go faster, to make boring things go faster,” Jagger said.

But the creative process itself has to be human, he said.

“In my opinion, you have to write the songs, play them and play them live,” he said. “Of course, you can overdub. I’ve been doing overdubs since 1965, that’s not new.”

Jagger acknowledged that some people are already using AI to generate songs from scratch in the style of established artists, including the Rolling Stones.

“But I mean, if you were any kind of creative person, you wouldn’t do that,” he added.

Jagger’s comments come after the band experimented with AI for rejuvenation in the music video for their latest single, “In the Stars.” In the video, released in May, AI was used to replace the faces of the musicians portraying the band with younger versions of the Rolling Stones.

“They’re not fake people in a fake room. All those drummers you see are all real drummers and they’re all playing in a real room,” Jagger said. “The musicians are real musicians who look a little like the Rolling Stones of 1968. The only thing was the faces.”

Jagger joins other artists debating the place of AI in the creative industries.

In 2023, Jason Derulo said he still doesn’t see AI as a threat to musicians because lyrics written by robots lacked “soul.”

“As we move forward and technology advances, we will have more and more tools,” Derulo said. “Hopefully, product creativity will continue to grow with technology rather than using technology as a crutch.”

In May, Jack Antonoff, lead singer of the rock band Bleachers and a former Taylor Swift collaborator, wrote an open letter criticizing “bad actors” who use AI in what he called the “sacred process” of making music.

“So to everyone who is excited about the new ways in which art creation can be simulated, by all means walk off that cliff,” Antonoff wrote in the letter. “We’re really happy to see you go.”