Leonardo DiCaprio Loves AI Music Mashups That Slap, But Ultimately, ‘There’s No Humanity To It’

One Battle After Another star Leonardo DiCaprio thinks artificial intelligence may “be an enhancement tool for a young filmmaker to do something we’ve never seen before,” even as he laments that some talented people could lose their jobs in the process. But in a chat with TIME magazine for their Entertainer of the Year honor, the Oscar-winning actor’s take on how AI might impact music in the future was a bit less optimistic.

“I think anything that is going to be authentically thought of as art has to come from the human being,” DiCaprio told the magazine. That said, he rattled off a list of AI-spiked mashup songs he dubbed “absolutely brilliant,” while offering a harsh rebuke of original music made by algorithm.

“Haven’t you heard these songs that are mashups that are just absolutely brilliant and you go, ‘Oh my God, this is Michael Jackson doing the Weeknd,’” DiCaprio said by way of example of AI-generated content that either mixes up artists who’ve never recorded together or plunks them into unexpected genres. “Or ‘This is funk from the A Tribe Called Quest song ‘Bonita Applebum,’ done in, you know, a sort of Al Green soul-song voice, and it’s brilliant.’”

Leo said his initial reaction to such computer-animated mash-ups is “cool,” but that sugar high of novelty wears off quicker than Andy Warhol predicted. “But then it gets its 15 minutes of fame and it just dissipates into the ether of other internet junk,” DiCaprio lamented. “There’s no anchoring to it. There’s no humanity to it, as brilliant as it is.”

The comments come as AI-generated music has begun storming the charts in the form of fictional acts such as Breaking Rust, which recently hit the top of the Country Digital Songs Sales chart with “Walk My Walk? and Xania Monet, who rose to the top of the R&B Digital Song Sales chart with “How Was I Supposed to Know?”

But, considering the music DiCaprio said is on rotation at his place, you can kind of see where his tastes might skew toward the analog versus future shock digital. The actor copped to loving all the “Blind” bluesmen of the past — a list that included Blind Willie McTell, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Willie Johnson — as well as such classic R&B/doo-wop crooners as the Ink Spots, the Mills Brothers and Johnny Mercer. “I like that sort of World War II–era harmony. It keeps me calm and chill,” said DiCaprio, 51, who also loves such peak early 20th century acts such as guitarist Django Reinhardt, as well as soul/R&B icons Al Green and Stevie Wonder.