Mick Jagger
Rolling Stones Frontman
The Rolling Stones frontman uses AI on his own terms — de-aging the band with deepfake tech for a 2026 video, brainstorming album titles with a chatbot — while drawing a hard line at imitation: AI music is fine by him if it’s original, but cloning the Stones’ sound is “obviously wrong.”
In his words
If someone wants to make music by AI, go ahead. But it has to be original — you have to have your own input and your own thoughts.
It can unstick you, and you think, “OK, that was rubbish,” or “Mine are loads better than yours.”
Biography
Mick Jagger (born 1943 in Dartford, England) has fronted the Rolling Stones for over six decades, and at 82 remains rock’s most durable early adopter — the band embraced the internet, streaming, and stadium-scale video long before their peers. AI is simply the latest tool he has picked up, poked at, and reviewed with characteristic bluntness.
Rubbish — but useful rubbish
Jagger told The Times he fed a chatbot his candidate titles for the Stones’ 2023 album “Hackney Diamonds” and asked for more: “it came back with such rubbish, it didn’t help me at all.” Yet he drew a genuinely original conclusion — that AI’s mediocrity is itself a creative service, a confidence booster that can “unstick you” by proving your own ideas are “loads better.”
The experiments continued on “Foreign Tongues,” the Stones’ 2026 album: the video for “In the Stars” used AI face technology to graft the band’s circa-1968 likenesses onto performers, a deepfake self-portrait Jagger said looked “like one of my children when they were 23.” Keith Richards approved: “Very nice. I wish I looked like that now.”
I don’t want people just putting stuff out there that can sound exactly like the Rolling Stones — I think that’s obviously wrong.
His line in the sand is imitation, not the technology: AI music is fine by him if it is original, but soundalike clones of the Stones are “obviously wrong.” It is the classic working-musician’s position — use the tool, police the identity theft.
Where they stand in the war
Voices for AI
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/mick-jagger