Jagger backs original AI music but rejects style cloning

Mick Jagger has given a conditional endorsement of artificial intelligence in music, stating that artists are free to use the technology so long as the output is genuinely their own. The Rolling Stones frontman drew a firm line against AI systems that replicate an existing artist's vocal or instrumental style. "If someone wants to make music by AI, go ahead," he said. "But it has to be original."

His comments arrive as the music industry confronts a wave of AI-generated tracks built on scraped catalogues. The fear is not hypothetical; passable voice clones of both living and dead singers have circulated online for two years. The question of who owns a machine-made copy of a musician's sound is currently working its slow way through the courts. This dispute carries direct implications for European music rights holders, publishers, and investors.

Major tech and music companies are already embedding AI into their commercial pipelines, testing market appetite. Sony has developed an AI drummer capable of passing as a session musician, while Spotify is using conversational AI to shape listener recommendations. Wholly synthetic acts have also begun appearing on music charts, probing the commercial boundaries of machine-generated content.

The band is not opposed to AI as a controlled tool. In May, they released a video for the single "In the Stars" using deepfake technology to graft their younger faces, roughly circa 1968, onto performing actors. Jagger framed this distinction as central to the debate: the difference between a tool an artist actively directs and one that quietly replaces the artist altogether.

Guitarist Keith Richards was blunter in his assessment. "I’d rather hear something original," he told the magazine, expressing a desire for "new input" rather than "more and more copying and synthesizing." Jagger noted his own experiments with the technology yielded poor results, recalling that using AI to name a previous record "came back with such rubbish, it didn’t help me at all."

The intervention coincides with the release of the band's 25th studio album, Foreign Tongues, which landed on 10 July. As courts deliberate on the legality of voice cloning, the group's public stance underscores a pressing market reality. If legal frameworks fail to distinguish between original AI composition and automated imitation, the economic model built on artist intellectual property could face structural disruption.