“I patently refuse to use AI in my music creation”: Billy Corgan calls AI “a deal with the devil” that could “wipe out” generations of songwriters
Billy Corgan is no fan of AI, and the world certainly won’t be seeing him use it in his music any time soon, if ever.
Appearing on the latest episode of And The Writer Is… podcast, the Smashing Pumpkins frontman slams artificial intelligence as “the most cataclysmic technological innovation” since the invention of moving pictures, framing its rise as an existential threat to songwriters and the creative process itself.
“You didn’t ask me, but I’m gonna make a declaratory statement,” Corgan begins [via Blabbermouth], “I refuse, refuse, patently refuse to use AI in my music creation. Because, to me, it’s a deal with the devil. Simple. Whether it’s the Promethean fire myth or whatever, to me you’re literally leaning into the thing that will destroy you. Period.”
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For Corgan, the value of making music lies in the struggle itself: the doubt, the creative blocks, and the slow process of finding something new.
“The pressure, the inspiration, the soul searching, the ‘I’m not sure I got anything else to say’, that’s all part of the journey that a songwriter needs to go through,” he explains. “I’m saying it’s good that a songwriter has doubt, it’s good that a songwriter’s not sure they have anything left to say, it’s good that a songwriter has to think of a new chord that they haven’t thought of. That’s where the magic comes from.”
Removing that struggle risks changing not just how music is made, but how it is valued. In an AI-shaped future, he argues, authenticity itself could become a selling point.
“Maybe people will listen to me and continue to listen to me into my old age because they know it’s coming from me. That actually might be part of the sale.”
But Corgan’s concern extends beyond individual artistry. What begins as a creative tool, he warns, could reshape the entire ecosystem around music-making.
“I’m saying I’m making a bigger argument,” he continues. “We, us, we’re flirting with the thing that will destroy us as a economy, as a business, as a movement. We’re asking to be eradicated. We’re giving them our information. They already have all our other information. God knows what the labels are doing… You’re asking to be wiped out.”
“I think the real fallow winter that’s coming is you’re gonna lose generations of songwriters.”
He then draws a comparison to the rise of superproducers like Max Martin, and a music landscape whereby the “producer-writer is more important than the artist”, noting how AI could accelerate that shift to its extreme, to the point where the human musicianship is no longer central to creation at all.
“You’re gonna see the rise of the guy who knows how to run the programs better than the other guy or girl,” says Corgan. “And he’ll be branded and he’ll have a sponsorship and he’ll be doing commercials [saying] ‘you can be just like me… I’m just really good at knowing how to put this information together. I don’t even know fucking music. I just know what I like.’”
While he acknowledges that every generation has its technological ‘shock’, Corgan believes this one will hit harder than most.
“Let’s face it, this shit’s gonna wipe out a lot of people,” he says. “This might be the most cataclysmic technological innovation in this town since the change from silence to talking pictures. A lot of people are gonna lose their gig and there’s gonna be a lot of new faces who are suddenly boy or girl wonder because they know how to press some fricking buttons.”
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