Jean-Michel Jarre urges music and film industries to embrace AI

Jean-Michel Jarre has attacked the conservatism of the music and film industries over AI and urged them to embrace the technology instead of being fearful and “very anti-AI”.

Jarre, one of the pioneers of electronic music in the 1970s, said while the existing creative industries were “freaking out” over the technology, artists would use AI “to create the cinema of tomorrow, the hip-hop of tomorrow, the techno of tomorrow, the rock’n’roll of tomorrow”.

AI’s power to generate images and sounds would not kill talent, but should be embraced as the pioneers of the film industry embraced the moving image and then sound in the early 20th century, he said.

The French musician’s comments were in stark contrast to deep anxieties about AI that have been expressed by other leading musicians including Elton John and Dua Lipa – in particular about models being trained on copyrighted material without clearance or compensation.

Artists and musicians around the world are fighting through courts and legislatures to protect their copyrighted works from being scraped and regurgitated by AI models. Jarre, 77, has sold 85m records and is a former president of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers, which advocates for creators rights. He was speaking at the launch of the second AI film festival in Cannes for which he is an ambassador.

“AI today is the wild west so we need to establish rules,” he said. But copying has long existed in art and original ideas often resulted because “your subconscious is harvesting your memories, your recollections, your culture, your environment. And then stealing from different random elements,” he added.

“It’s absolutely unfair to reduce the huge possibilities of AI by just thinking of doing a fake pop song, a fake heavy metal song,” he said.

Jarre has been using AI in his work since 2018.

“Every technological revolution seems to be always considered as a threat by the previous established media or mode of expressions,” he said. “And AI is exactly the same. We should never be afraid of technology.”

“It’s strange how conservative the movie industry and the music industry are [on AI],” he said, urging creatives to think of AI as “augmented imagination”. “They are probably more conservative than lots of other sectors in our society. And everybody’s in their own lane and they’re all considering everything which could disrupt [their business].”

“When I started, I remember I introduced electronic music in the French opera house [in 1971], and some musicians of the orchestra were unplugging the PA system, thinking that electronic music is going to be the end of orchestras and their jobs.”

He said creatives should not fear that AI would take their roles but to use the technology as a catalyst for a new mode of expression, comparing it to the emergence of the 1970s Fairlight sampling system, which was embraced by musicians like Peter Gabriel and Herbie Hancock.