“What we’ll do is maybe just take an acoustic, get the song done, upload it and say, ‘OK, I want to hear this song as a country song’ or ‘I want to hear this song as a rock and roll song”: Teddy Swims admits he’s used AI on his own material

Teddy Swims, the smooth but scary-looking US singer-songwriter, has admitted that he uses AI as part of his creative process.

Swims, whose real name is Jaten Dimsdale, was speaking at an in-conversation keynote address at the Sydney edition of South By South West. He explained that by using AI his producers were able to change one of his lyrics without him having to trek into the studio.

“Rather than me going (to) the studio and doing the line 15 times and spending that time and money and effort, he’s actually been able to go in and just change the word,” Swims said. “And something small like that, I think AI has been very helpful.”

Teddy Swims - Bad Dreams (Official Music Video) - YouTube

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The singer also said he used it to imagine how possible new songs could sound in different styles. “What we’ll do is maybe just take an acoustic and write the melody and the lyrics and just get the song done and upload it into it and say, ‘OK, I want to hear this song as a country song’ or ‘I want to hear this song as a rock and roll song’,” he explained.

“Instead of taking time to reproduce something over and over and over again in so many different ways that would take months sometimes to do, you can get the idea of what something would be fully fleshed out in this lane."

“If you use it the correct way, I think it’s a beautiful tool,” he suggested.

Swims though was more sceptical about purely AI generated music, saying that AI ‘artists’ weren’t something he was “super pumped” about. He did mention that he had come across several “goofy” AI videos of himself.

One of these, he thought was “really excellent” he said. “And I was like, I could probably just maybe take this chorus and rework it and write some verses to it.”

The 33-year-old singer-songwriter actually reached out to the song’s creator and asked to use the track in question. Now you’d think this wouldn’t be a problem: it was, after all, his voice on the song. But Swims was told he had to seek the necessary rights and permission.

“And I was like ‘well, that just sounds like bullshit,'” he added. That’s one way of putting it, I guess...