Dee Snider is best known for singing the classic rock tune “We’re Not Gonna Take It” with the band Twisted Sister, and now he can add artificial intelligence to the list of things he’s willing to stand up against.
The rocker called the developing AI trend “terrifying” during a new interview with Fox News Digital, but he noted that there’s a certain class of workers who likely won’t be affected by its increasing popularity.
Snider was featured in a new “Biography” special on A&E where he can be seen doing what he does best: working as a “frontman” for his rock band.
“It’s not something that everybody knows,” he told Fox News Digital. “They know the songs, they know things about me, but they don’t know that is the thing I do best. I don’t think AI can replace that.”
He continued, “They can’t replace physical jobs, you know, manual labor, which being a frontman is — rocking, connecting with the audience, whatever.”
However, Snider said that many other aspects of being in a band, such as singing and songwriting as well as jobs on the business side of music, could be done with artificial intelligence.
“They’re going to take everybody’s jobs,” he said, “if you’re not a blue-collar worker.”
Blue-collar workers, he said, actually make things.
“They can’t do that,” the singer pointed out. “They don’t have hands.”
Snider concluded, “Anyway, be that as it may, I’m glad I’ll be dead before the excrement really hits the fan.”
Snider, 69, has been in the music industry for roughly 50 years. He told Fox News Digital that while Twisted Sister’s breakout hit, “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” was released in 1984, the band had been together for 10 years before finding mainstream success.
“I could have been a doctor in that time,” he joked. “I mean, I could have found a cure for cancer in 10 years.”
Twisted Sister reached international fame in the ’80s before breaking up toward the end of the decade. Just a few years later, Snider found himself broke enough to file for bankruptcy twice. He found a desk job to provide for his family.
In 1998, Celine Dion came across a Christmas song he had written years before and recorded it. The song was a massive success, and Snider had publishing rights, which led to a nice payday for him. Since then, he’s been throwing himself into various fields in the entertainment industry.
“Radio, voice-over, acting, reality TV, movies, I do all those things,” he said.
Last month, John Oates of Hall & Oates fame shared similar concerns about AI with Fox News Digital.
“Look at what’s coming in with AI, the possibility that AI is going to be replacing songwriters and artists, for that matter,” Oates said. “The idea that there could be a new … David Bowie album. AI could take David Bowie’s voice and extrapolate and sample his music for his entire career and write new David Bowie songs, and the record company could put it out.”
He added, “A younger generation might not even know. They might not even know he’s dead, for that matter. It’s a crazy future, and it’s a crazy, scary world that we’re kind of leaning toward. So, there’s a lot going on, and you have to pay attention.”
The musician also praised the recent bill that passed in Tennessee to protect singers’ voice likenesses, dubbed the ELVIS Act.
The bill also promises to create a new civil action by which people could be held liable if they publish or perform an individual’s voice without permission or use technology to produce an artist’s name, photographs, voice or likeness without the proper authorization, according to the Associated Press.
Country star Walker Hayes also spoke to Fox News Digital recently. He shared another concern about AI taking over the music space.
“I’m really glad I was born when I was born, when creativity was needed. I heard an AI song the other day, by an AI group and everything, and I’m telling you, it can outwrite me any day,” he said.
He continued, “It was absolutely phenomenal. And I’m not going to sit here and pretend I could out-create it.
“Honestly, it makes me wonder, when you take the necessity for humans to create out of the world, I don’t know if I want to see what the world looks like then,” he said. “I think that’s when we’re all just sitting and not moving, and we only talk, and we’re just lying in a bed. So, I got to tell you, it weirds me out.”
