Story thread · 2 reports / 2 sources

Fender’s CEO compared cover bands to AI. Now he’s walking it back

fastcompany.com · 7dShare

The CEO of the world’s biggest guitar brand has drawn the ire of musicians after comparing cover bands to chatbots, seemingly dismissing both as fundamentally uncreative. He now wants to set the record straight. Speaking to the website T3 earlier this year , Fender CEO Edward “Bud” Cole argued that cover songs function as a kind of “analog AI ,” allowing beginners to play music before they write their songs. He also claimed to see a songwriter’s bandmates serving a similar role to a large language model, helping to develop partial ideas into full songs, and said indeed AI itself could further help musicians create original work. “I actually think that we are in the brink of freeing up people to move beyond the same old covers and to really get into working like they do with their bands,” he said. But months later, Cole now wants to clarify those comments. “I had a conversation a few months ago about AI in music,” Cole says in an email to Fast Company . “My intent was to talk about how

First report: Fender’s CEO seems to think your bandmates are just analog AI — theverge.com, 9d