Kanye West
Rapper and Producer
One of the most influential and most controversial figures in modern music, who has folded AI vocals into recent work and likened it to Auto-Tune — “a tool, not a replacement” — before abruptly disowning AI on his next project.
In his words
AI in music the same way I incorporated Auto-Tune. It’s a tool, not a replacement.
Biography
Kanye West (born 1977, and legally renamed Ye) is a rapper and producer whose albums reshaped hip-hop across two decades. He is also among the most controversial figures in music — his 2022 antisemitic outbursts cost him major partnerships, and in 2025 he released a track built around a Nazi slogan, drawing widespread condemnation.
“A tool, not a replacement”
West has been a conspicuous adopter of generative AI in the studio. On 2024’s VULTURES 2 (with Ty Dolla $ign) he leaned on AI vocal tools such as Audimee, reportedly sending his engineer songs and samples with the single instruction “AI.” In a 2025 interview with Justin Laboy he defended the practice by comparing it to his early embrace of Auto-Tune.
His enthusiasm proved characteristically mercurial: in March 2026 West announced that his forthcoming album Bully was made without artificial intelligence — an apparent reversal after the heavily AI-assisted VULTURES era. As with much of his public output, the position shifts faster than it can be pinned down.
Where they stand in the war
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/kanye-west