M. Shadows Says He Would ‘Love to Give Up’ His Voice For AI

Avenged Sevenfold‘s M. Shadows recently said he would love to “give up” his voice for songs generated by artificial intelligence (AI), elaborating on a Tweet he previously posted.

While speaking on Twitter, Shadows credited Grimes —who declared that she welcomed musicians to create new songs with her voice using Artificial Intelligence, saying she would split 50 percent royalties on any successful AI-generated track that included her voice.

Shadows weighed in on the move, telling fans on Twitter, “I like what @Grimezs is doing with her likeness and AI. I’m not sure the logistics while on a label… but moving forward I would love to help facilitate our ‘sound’ to producers and fans to create original “@TheOfficialA7X” songs using this technology.”

Now, Shadows has appeared on Decrypt’s “gm” podcast for a more in-depth discussion on the issue. He said he believes there are a lot of Avenged Sevenfold fans who don’t want to hear new music from the band as they might not like the direction their music is currently heading —and AI could help with that problem. “I think it would be really cool if people can prompt their own versions of what Avenged Sevenfold sounds like,” he explained. “You get the sounds you want, you get all these things, but now you’re getting different versions of albums that you like. So I think there’s something really cool there and nothing that crazy or wrong about it. I back it.”

He also added that “AI can be incredibly useful” for songwriters, noting how you can prompt the technology to assist with different versions of a chord change or top line. ‘You take a little thing that interests you and you go somewhere with it. So now you’re using AI to not only spark ideas but you’re using it in a much quicker way to kind of get to some of these cool little nuggets of gold that you kind of are, like, ‘Oh, that’s cool. Let me see where I can take that.’ So that’s not really AI writing a song for you; it’s kind of giving you this kind of jumping-off point of, ‘Now where can I be creative with it?’ And I think that will be the next step.”

M. Shadows and Avenged Sevenfold are currently gearing up to hit the road for the first time in five years. Their 2023 North American tour kicks off in Camden, New Jersey, on July 18 and runs through August. Before that, the band are slated to perform at a few music festivals. Make sure to grab your tickets here.