Teddy Swims sparks backlash for promoting AI music tools

Singer Teddy swims faced backlash online after promoting the use of AI to create music.

During a conversation at SXSW Sydney, the “Lose Control” singer explained how he and his team used powerful artificial intelligence systems to tweak parts of his music.

Teddy Swims’ recent admission about using AI in his music comes amid growing concerns from other artists about the impact artificial intelligence could have on their industry.

During Swims’ chat with his manager and creative partner, Luke Conway, and host Lucy Blakiston, the Billboard chart-topping singer opened up about how AI is “truly amazing,” especially for him as an artist. Swims admitted that he and his team have used AI in some of his music and that the tool has been “very helpful” to them.

An example of using AI as a useful tool for Swims occurred when he needed to change the lyrics of one of his songs but couldn’t get to the studio in America because he was in Sydney, Australia. “Rather than go there [to] “In the studio and doing the line 15 times and spending that time and money and effort, he was actually able to go in there and just change the word,” he said.

Swims’ use of AI goes far beyond simply changing the lyrics of a song. According to the “Bed On Fire” singer, he also used AI to help him visualize how a song he created might sound in a different genre.

“What we’ll do is maybe just take an acoustic and write the melody and the lyrics and then finish the song and upload it in and say, ‘OK, I want to hear this song as a country song,’ or ‘I want to hear this song as a rock and roll song,’” he said.

For Swims, using AI in this way saves him and his team a lot of time, money and energy. “Instead of taking the time to replicate something over and over in so many different ways, which would sometimes take months, you can get a sense of whether something would be fully developed down that path,” he said.

However, there is one part of the AI ​​trend that Swims isn’t a fan of, namely creators creating AI-generated videos of himself and using his voice. In fact, he expressed frustration over an incident in which he found a video of himself online that he wanted to use. “And I was like I could probably take that chorus and rework it and write a few verses to it,” he said.

After calling a member of his team, Swims learned he couldn’t use the video because someone else owned the copyright. “And I was like, ‘well, that looks like crap,’” he said.

His complaint, however, seemed to upset some online users, who criticized the singer for appearing hypocritical. “AI art advocate is a hypocrite. Not at 11 anymore,” someone wrote on Reddit. “His name is not Teddy Thinks,” another user said.

“You can’t have both paintings,” a third user wrote, while a fourth shared: “If you’re an artist [who] uses AI to create your art, you are no longer an artist. Creator, certainly, but certainly not an artist. »

The conversation about Swims’ use of AI in its music comes at a pivotal time, as an AI Christian artist named Solomon Ray has topped the Billboard Gospel charts, sparking outrage from singers and listeners alike.

According to the New York Post, Ray’s Spotify profile describes him as a “Mississippi-born soul singer bringing a Southern soul revival into the present.” He has over 600,000 monthly listeners and has released two EPs since November 2025.