Sam Smith

Sam Smith (born 1992 in London) broke through on Disclosure’s “Latch” before their debut album In the Lonely Hour (2014) made them a global star, sweeping four Grammys including Best New Artist. Smith won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for the Bond theme “Writing’s on the Wall,” and scored another worldwide No. 1 with 2022’s “Unholy.” One of pop’s most distinctive voices, Smith came out as non-binary in 2019.

Signing the ARA letter

In April 2024, Smith joined more than 200 artists — including Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry and Elvis Costello — in signing the Artist Rights Alliance open letter calling on AI developers, technology companies, platforms and digital music services to “cease the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists.”

The letter warned that some of the biggest companies were using artists’ work without permission to train models, and that AI-generated content threatens to “substantially dilute” the royalty pools artists are paid from. “This assault on human creativity must be stopped,” it declared — while conceding that AI used responsibly has enormous potential to advance creativity.

The stakes are concrete for a singer whose instrument is an unmistakable voice: AI clones of Smith’s vocals already power unauthorized covers across YouTube and TikTok, exactly the kind of uncompensated voice replication the letter targets.