Annie Lennox
Singer & Activist
Eurythmics icon and one of Britain’s most decorated vocalists. She fronted the Ban Deepfakes campaign’s call to hold AI companies accountable and co-wrote the silent protest album “Is This What We Want?” against UK AI copyright exemptions.
Why this score
How the formula works →- +5.9antiCampaigns against AI
- +1.6anti2 anti-AI statements (forceful)
Weights, statement counts, the ×1.25 multiplier for having a stake in an AI-impacted field, and the formula’s smoothing are already baked in — the points add up to the score: Strongly Anti-AI · 7.5/10
In her words
Along with the creators and distributors of fake, nonconsensual explicit content, we need to hold the tech companies whose AI models enable this harm accountable.
The British Government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies.
Biography
Annie Lennox (born 1954 in Aberdeen, Scotland) redefined pop androgyny and vocal power with Eurythmics — “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” — before a solo career (“Diva,” “Walking on Broken Glass”) that made her one of Britain’s most decorated artists, with multiple Grammys, a record haul of Brit Awards, and an Oscar for “Into the West.” She is equally known as a campaigner, from HIV/AIDS advocacy to feminist causes.
Deepfakes, then a silent album
Lennox brought her activist instincts to AI in August 2024, joining the Artist Rights Alliance in backing the Ban Deepfakes campaign — a coalition with SAG-AFTRA and the Future of Life Institute — and warning that deepfake technology had created “a new, rapidly expanding frontier of sexual abuse, primarily against women and girls,” with accountability owed by the AI companies whose models enable it.
In February 2025 she became one of the marquee names among 1,000-plus co-writers of “Is This What We Want?”, the silent protest album of empty-studio recordings organized against the UK government’s proposal to let AI developers train on copyrighted work unless creators opt out. The album’s track titles spell out its message — “The British Government Must Not Legalise Music Theft To Benefit AI Companies” — and its profits went to the charity Help Musicians.
Quote sources
- Future of Life Institute, 2024(futureoflife.org)
- “Is This What We Want?” album track titles (co-writer), 2025(nbcnews.com)
Sources & further reading
- Future of Life Institute: Artist Rights Alliance and Annie Lennox speak out with Ban Deepfakes campaign (2024)
- NBC News: 1,000 musicians release a silent album in protest of UK’s proposed AI copyright law changes (2025)
- Rolling Stone: Damon Albarn, Annie Lennox, Kate Bush release silent album to protest proposed UK AI law (2025)
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/annie-lennox
