When the COVID-19 pandemic meant large parts of the world went into lockdown, Grammy-award winning singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo started working on her latest album. Thanks to technology — in this case, remote recordings — she completed the entire album in quarantine. “Technology allowed me to do my Mother Nature album without pretty much seeing anyone,” she explained in a session at Davos.
All that to say, Kidjo is far from a Luddite: she sees the potential that new digital technologies like AI have to augment the creative process.
Speaking at the same session, another award-winning Grammy artist, Nile Rodgers, echoed her sentiment. “When I was on my way to a session yesterday, I downloaded an AI music program and I fed it maybe five or six words. The result was very, very impressive,” he explained. “Now, I would never put that out and say, oh, I wrote this song. Not in a million years. But it did inspire me. I listened to it and I said, oh, that’s a cool idea.”
If AI holds huge potential for those working in the creative industries — and 60% of the music sector are said to be already integrating it into compositions — it is also raising some serious questions. For example, as a report from the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers found last year, those working in the music industry could stand to lose almost a quarter of their income to AI within the next four years.
For both Kidjo and Rodgers, this financial threat posed by technologies like both AI and streaming is very real. “I just got a plaque from Spotify where I got a billion streams for a song,” explained Rodgers. “And some kid wrote, as a joke, but he wasn’t far off: Oh, a billion streams, what did you get, $100?”
“I’m not against technology. I just want to keep my humanity.”— Angélique Kidjo.
Kidjo was even more passionate in her comments. “Today, with AI, with the internet, with streaming, the work we do means nothing anymore. Anyone can take your music and listen,” she said, making sure to highlight that she doesn’t blame listeners and instead sees it as a system-wide issue. “We have no rights, as the human beings writing the music that is making other people rich, and they think that the little peanuts they give us is sufficient enough for us to shut our mouths and say nothing.”
While the issue of remuneration and ownership is an important one, technologies like AI also raise profound existential questions about what it means to be human in the digital age.
“I’m so scared about AI coming into the music business without laws put in place that recognize that behind every song, there is a human life,” Kidjo said. “People find value through their work. If we take that away from them, what do we leave the human being to be?”
Some movement is already happening when it comes to regulation. For example, Rodgers has recently been meeting with MPs in the UK to discuss the topic. “We’re slowly moving in the right direction,” Rodgers said. “The reason we’re not moving faster is money. The people who are traditionally called the gatekeepers are making way, way, way too much money.”
But with the pace of technological change, we cannot afford to stall on this issue. “I’m not against technology,” Kidjo said. “I just want to keep my humanity.”
By: World Economic Forum 2025.
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