Nick Mason on How AI Could Benefit Pink Floyd

The surviving members of Pink Floyd are likely not getting together anytime soon, especially considering the recent war of words between David Gilmour and his wife, Polly Samson, and Roger Waters. However, Nick Mason had some interesting thoughts about how Pink Floyd could benefit from the use of artificial intelligence.

Mason touched on this in a new interview with U.K.'s Mirror. The drummer alludes to having AI create Pink Floyd music as if Waters never left the band.

"It would be fascinating to see what AI could do with new music," said Mason. " ... The thing to do would be to have an AI situation where David and Roger become friends again."

The idea that Gilmour and Waters can only be friends again via AI is funny, a little sad, super interesting but a bit scary, too. Back in April, a diverse group of artists known as the Artist Rights Alliance, which includes Pearl Jam and Jon Bon Jovi, published an open letter on Medium 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 noted, "Make no mistake: We believe that, when used responsibly, AI has enormous potential to advance human creativity and in a manner that enables the development and growth of new and exciting experiences for music fans everywhere. Unfortunately, some platforms and developers are employing AI to sabotage creativity and undermine artists, songwriters, musicians and rightsholders."

The letter concludes, "We call on all AI developers, technology companies, platforms and digital music services to pledge that they will not develop AI music-generation technology, content or tools that undermine or replace the human artistry of songwriters and artists or deny us fair compensation for our work."

In addition to Pearl Jam and Jon Bon Jovi, other artists who are part of the Artist Rights Alliance include Billie Eilish, FINNEAS, R.E.M., Peter Frampton, Sheryl Crow, Robert Smith, Elvis Costello, Smokey Robinson, Greta Van Fleet, The Estate of Bob Marley and The Estate of Frank Sinatra.

Formerly known as the Content Creators Coalition, the Artist Rights Alliance describes itself as, " ... a non-profit, artist-run organization advocating for music creators for fair compensation in the digital realm. We work for songwriters and musicians."

The Artist Rights Alliance has many goals that fall under their overall mission. In addition to fair compensation, the group also aims for transparency from music services, publishers, record companies and more. They're also striving to build an ecosystem that will help new artists and songwriters flourish in the music industry.

Nearly 40 years after their main songwriter Roger Waters left the band and nearly 30 after their final real album (1994’s ‘The Division Bell’) Pink Floyd remain one of the most popular rock bands of all time. As their masterpiece - or one of their masterpieces - ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ turns 50, we’re counting down their greatest songs, from their early Syd Barrett era to their post-Waters days.

We are combining titles here: “Brain Damage” and “Eclipse,” for example, are hard to separate. “Pigs On The Wing (Part One)” and “Pigs On The Wing (Part Two)” kind of go together, as does the whole “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” suite, and we wish they’d put out a track that includes all of the segments of the song together. Anyway, check out our list of our favorite Floyd jams.