The Waterboys Will Not Be Deterred From Posting AI Slop

Last year, the Waterboys released Life, Death And Dennis Hopper, a concept album about the late Hollywood icon featuring Bruce Springsteen, Fiona Apple, Steve Earle, and more. The longstanding project of Mike Scott returned last month with a new b-sides LP with 16 more songs about Dennis Hopper, and it had R. Crumb-ripoff AI-generated cover art. One of the singles also came with an AI-generated music video, and backlash ensued. Then he began a Chat GPT-generated rock ‘n’ roll visual history series on Instagram, which of course prompted more negative feedback. The Scottish musician disabled the comments and has been making posts criticizing anti-AI stances.

"Report On Anti-AI Police Activity" is the latest post, made yesterday, and it criticizes anti-AI individuals for "[adopting a] judgmental position," "[turning] into art police," and having a "sense of entitlement to tell other artists how to act." In the caption, Scott wrote:

We've disabled comments on the postings of chatgpt images because they're getting hijacked by anti-AI PC people, almost none of whom follow the Waterboys or probably even know who we are or what the band is about or what our music sounds like. They post a kind of anti-AI spam, smug, humourless messages (almost all identical as if posted from a central anti-AI HQ or a club of campaigners). Nobody has the right to tell this band, or any band or artist, what we can or can't do creatively, and if you try to do so you can Fuck Off. The attached image says what I think about these peoples' comments.

He also shared the graphic last month.