Anti-AIPerson

Brian May

Queen Guitarist

Queen’s guitarist and an astrophysicist, May has issued some of rock’s starkest AI warnings — calling 2023 possibly “the last year when humans really dominated the music scene” and declaring the mass scraping of music an unstoppable theft.

Musician Entertainment Academic

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In his words

Everything is going to get very blurred and very confusing, and I think we might look back on 2023 as the last year when humans really dominated the music scene.

— Guitar Player, 2023

My fear is that it’s already too late. This theft has already been performed and is unstoppable.

— Daily Mail, 2025

Biography

Brian May (born 1947 in London) built his own guitar with his father, co-founded Queen in 1970, and wrote a string of the band’s biggest anthems, from “We Will Rock You” to “Fat Bottomed Girls.” He is also that rarest of rock stars — a working scientist, having completed a PhD in astrophysics in 2007 and collaborated with NASA on the New Horizons mission. When he warns about technology, he speaks as someone who understands it.

The last human year

In a September 2023 Guitar Player interview, May said his “major concern” with AI was artistic: within a year, he predicted, “we won’t know what’s been created by AI and what’s been created by humans.” He conceded that “a lot of great stuff will come from AI” in problem-solving domains, but called the overall picture “massively scary” — with stakes far beyond music, since “nobody dies in music, but people can die if AI gets involved in politics.”

I really think it could be that serious, and that doesn’t fill me with joy. It makes me feel apprehensive, and I’m preparing to feel sad about this.

— Guitar Player, 2023

By March 2025 his apprehension had hardened into protest. Backing the press campaign against the UK government’s proposal to let AI developers mine copyrighted music under an opt-out scheme — the same plan Elton John and Kate Bush fought — May told the Daily Mail that if the plan went through, “nobody will be able to afford to make music,” and that the theft of artists’ work “has already been performed and is unstoppable.”