Sting

Sting (born Gordon Sumner, 1951, in Wallsend, England) fronted The Police through five era-defining albums before a solo career that made him one of the most decorated songwriters alive, with 17 Grammy Awards and classics from “Roxanne” to “Every Breath You Take” and “Fields of Gold.”

Defending human capital

In May 2023, as the Ivors Academy awarded him its highest honour, the Fellowship, Sting told the BBC that AI-written songs represented a fight the profession could not dodge. He compared his instinctive reaction to AI music with computer-generated imagery in film — telling the BBC he gets immediately bored when he sees a CGI image and imagined feeling the same about AI making music — while conceding the tools themselves could have uses in electronic genres.

Around the same appearance, Variety reported him insisting the machines could not be allowed to take over songwriting. His stance has been consistent since: analog craft, human stakes, and suspicion of anything that automates the emotional labour of a song. Unlike peers such as Paul McCartney, who used machine learning to restore a lost John Lennon vocal, Sting has framed AI mainly as a threat to be resisted rather than an instrument to be mastered.