'It's a really great tool': ABBA's Björn Ulvaeus making a new musical with AI
ABBA's Björn Ulvaeus is making a musical using AI and has hailed the divisive technology "an extension of your mind".
The 'Dancing Queen' hitmaker was one of 10,500 signatories from the creative industries warning artificial intelligence companies that unlicensed use of their work is a 'major, unjust threat' to artists' livelihoods.
The statement read: "The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted."
Although Ulvaeus is against his work being used without his consent - that doesn't mean he isn't a fan of the technology, going as far as to call it a songwriting partner.
Speaking at London's inaugural SXSW on Wednesday (04.06.25), he said: 'It is such a great tool. It is like having another songwriter in the room with a huge reference frame.
'It is really an extension of your mind. You have access to things that you didn't think of before.'
Explaining how he utilises AI, he added: 'You can prompt a lyric you have written about something, and you're stuck maybe, and you want this song to be in a certain style. 'You can ask it, How would you extend? Where would you go from here? It usually comes out with garbage, but sometimes there is something in it that gives you another idea.'
The Swedish pop veteran previously warned that AI must not "exclude the human".
In a previous interview with BBC Look North, he said: "It's going to make song-writing different. Whether it's going to be better, I don't know but it's it's going to affect society as a whole.
"It could lead to spectacular things. On the other hand, we have to be very cautious so that it doesn't exclude the human songwriter or producer or artist.
"To be heard through the noise you really have to be very, very good. I think that it takes a human hand to add that extra little percentage needed to achieve a really good song."
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The Advertiser
an hour ago
- The Advertiser
Spielberg opposed to using AI in front of the camera
When Steven Spielberg directed the film AI Artificial Intelligence, the technology was the stuff of science fiction - a device to tell a story about the ethics of creating sentient machines. Now, AI is a concrete reality in Hollywood - one where Spielberg said he has drawn a line in the sand. "I don't want AI making any creative decisions that I can't make myself," Spielberg said in an interview with Reuters. "And I don't want to use AI as a non-human collaborator, in trying to work out my creative thinking." Spielberg spoke on Thursday after a ceremony dedicating the Steven Spielberg Theater on the Universal Studios lot. The event acknowledged the director's decades-long relationship with the studio, which released such films as Jaws, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The acclaimed director joked that his career at Universal began in 1967, when he took a tour of the lot as a high school student. He said he hid in the bathroom during a break, and waited for the tour to move on without him, "then I had the entire lot to myself that day". "Our hope and dream is that it's not just the place that is founded on his extraordinary legacy," said Donna Langley, chairman of NBCUniversal Entertainment & Studios. "But it is the place of future hopes and dreams of filmmakers and storytellers who are going to take this company into the next 100 years and the 100 years after that, people who come with a hope and a dream, people who have been inspired by Steven." Spielberg's 2001 modest box office hit AI Artificial Intelligence was a meditation on love, loss and what it means to be human through the eyes of a discarded humanoid robot. In the Pinocchio-like journey set in a futuristic dystopia, David, the android boy, yearns to be human, searching for love, in a world of machines and artificial intelligence. The film hit screens when AI was still in its nascent stages and predated the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT by 21 years. "It wasn't about artificial intelligence as much as it was about sentient existence, and can you love a sentient entity? Can a mother love a robot child?" Spielberg said. "It was not really where AI is taking us today. Eventually, there will be a convergence between AI and robotics." Spielberg said AI can be a great tool "if used responsibly and morally" to help find a cure for cancer and other diseases. "I just draw a line - and it's not a line of cement, it's just a little bit of line in the sand - which gives me some wiggle room to say (that) I have the option to revise this thinking in the future," he said. "But right now, I don't want AI making any creative decisions." He said he has seen, first-hand, how technology can replace human talent while working on the 1993 film Jurassic Park. Spielberg initially planned to use renowned stop-motion clay animation artist Phil Tippett to create the dinosaurs roaming the island theme park. Visual effects artist Dennis Muren proposed an alternative method, using Industrial Light & Magic's computer-generated imagery to create realistic dinosaurs. The director is an executive producer in Jurassic World: Rebirth which reaches theatres on July 2. "That kind of made certain careers somewhat extinct," Spielberg said. "So, I'm very sensitive to things that AI may do to take work away from people." Spielberg said he has yet to use AI on any of his films so far although he is open to possible applications of it behind-the-scenes, in functions like budgeting or planning. "I don't want to use it in front of the camera right now," Spielberg said. "Not quite yet." When Steven Spielberg directed the film AI Artificial Intelligence, the technology was the stuff of science fiction - a device to tell a story about the ethics of creating sentient machines. Now, AI is a concrete reality in Hollywood - one where Spielberg said he has drawn a line in the sand. "I don't want AI making any creative decisions that I can't make myself," Spielberg said in an interview with Reuters. "And I don't want to use AI as a non-human collaborator, in trying to work out my creative thinking." Spielberg spoke on Thursday after a ceremony dedicating the Steven Spielberg Theater on the Universal Studios lot. The event acknowledged the director's decades-long relationship with the studio, which released such films as Jaws, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The acclaimed director joked that his career at Universal began in 1967, when he took a tour of the lot as a high school student. He said he hid in the bathroom during a break, and waited for the tour to move on without him, "then I had the entire lot to myself that day". "Our hope and dream is that it's not just the place that is founded on his extraordinary legacy," said Donna Langley, chairman of NBCUniversal Entertainment & Studios. "But it is the place of future hopes and dreams of filmmakers and storytellers who are going to take this company into the next 100 years and the 100 years after that, people who come with a hope and a dream, people who have been inspired by Steven." Spielberg's 2001 modest box office hit AI Artificial Intelligence was a meditation on love, loss and what it means to be human through the eyes of a discarded humanoid robot. In the Pinocchio-like journey set in a futuristic dystopia, David, the android boy, yearns to be human, searching for love, in a world of machines and artificial intelligence. The film hit screens when AI was still in its nascent stages and predated the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT by 21 years. "It wasn't about artificial intelligence as much as it was about sentient existence, and can you love a sentient entity? Can a mother love a robot child?" Spielberg said. "It was not really where AI is taking us today. Eventually, there will be a convergence between AI and robotics." Spielberg said AI can be a great tool "if used responsibly and morally" to help find a cure for cancer and other diseases. "I just draw a line - and it's not a line of cement, it's just a little bit of line in the sand - which gives me some wiggle room to say (that) I have the option to revise this thinking in the future," he said. "But right now, I don't want AI making any creative decisions." He said he has seen, first-hand, how technology can replace human talent while working on the 1993 film Jurassic Park. Spielberg initially planned to use renowned stop-motion clay animation artist Phil Tippett to create the dinosaurs roaming the island theme park. Visual effects artist Dennis Muren proposed an alternative method, using Industrial Light & Magic's computer-generated imagery to create realistic dinosaurs. The director is an executive producer in Jurassic World: Rebirth which reaches theatres on July 2. "That kind of made certain careers somewhat extinct," Spielberg said. "So, I'm very sensitive to things that AI may do to take work away from people." Spielberg said he has yet to use AI on any of his films so far although he is open to possible applications of it behind-the-scenes, in functions like budgeting or planning. "I don't want to use it in front of the camera right now," Spielberg said. "Not quite yet." When Steven Spielberg directed the film AI Artificial Intelligence, the technology was the stuff of science fiction - a device to tell a story about the ethics of creating sentient machines. Now, AI is a concrete reality in Hollywood - one where Spielberg said he has drawn a line in the sand. "I don't want AI making any creative decisions that I can't make myself," Spielberg said in an interview with Reuters. "And I don't want to use AI as a non-human collaborator, in trying to work out my creative thinking." Spielberg spoke on Thursday after a ceremony dedicating the Steven Spielberg Theater on the Universal Studios lot. The event acknowledged the director's decades-long relationship with the studio, which released such films as Jaws, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The acclaimed director joked that his career at Universal began in 1967, when he took a tour of the lot as a high school student. He said he hid in the bathroom during a break, and waited for the tour to move on without him, "then I had the entire lot to myself that day". "Our hope and dream is that it's not just the place that is founded on his extraordinary legacy," said Donna Langley, chairman of NBCUniversal Entertainment & Studios. "But it is the place of future hopes and dreams of filmmakers and storytellers who are going to take this company into the next 100 years and the 100 years after that, people who come with a hope and a dream, people who have been inspired by Steven." Spielberg's 2001 modest box office hit AI Artificial Intelligence was a meditation on love, loss and what it means to be human through the eyes of a discarded humanoid robot. In the Pinocchio-like journey set in a futuristic dystopia, David, the android boy, yearns to be human, searching for love, in a world of machines and artificial intelligence. The film hit screens when AI was still in its nascent stages and predated the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT by 21 years. "It wasn't about artificial intelligence as much as it was about sentient existence, and can you love a sentient entity? Can a mother love a robot child?" Spielberg said. "It was not really where AI is taking us today. Eventually, there will be a convergence between AI and robotics." Spielberg said AI can be a great tool "if used responsibly and morally" to help find a cure for cancer and other diseases. "I just draw a line - and it's not a line of cement, it's just a little bit of line in the sand - which gives me some wiggle room to say (that) I have the option to revise this thinking in the future," he said. "But right now, I don't want AI making any creative decisions." He said he has seen, first-hand, how technology can replace human talent while working on the 1993 film Jurassic Park. Spielberg initially planned to use renowned stop-motion clay animation artist Phil Tippett to create the dinosaurs roaming the island theme park. Visual effects artist Dennis Muren proposed an alternative method, using Industrial Light & Magic's computer-generated imagery to create realistic dinosaurs. The director is an executive producer in Jurassic World: Rebirth which reaches theatres on July 2. "That kind of made certain careers somewhat extinct," Spielberg said. "So, I'm very sensitive to things that AI may do to take work away from people." Spielberg said he has yet to use AI on any of his films so far although he is open to possible applications of it behind-the-scenes, in functions like budgeting or planning. "I don't want to use it in front of the camera right now," Spielberg said. "Not quite yet." When Steven Spielberg directed the film AI Artificial Intelligence, the technology was the stuff of science fiction - a device to tell a story about the ethics of creating sentient machines. Now, AI is a concrete reality in Hollywood - one where Spielberg said he has drawn a line in the sand. "I don't want AI making any creative decisions that I can't make myself," Spielberg said in an interview with Reuters. "And I don't want to use AI as a non-human collaborator, in trying to work out my creative thinking." Spielberg spoke on Thursday after a ceremony dedicating the Steven Spielberg Theater on the Universal Studios lot. The event acknowledged the director's decades-long relationship with the studio, which released such films as Jaws, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The acclaimed director joked that his career at Universal began in 1967, when he took a tour of the lot as a high school student. He said he hid in the bathroom during a break, and waited for the tour to move on without him, "then I had the entire lot to myself that day". "Our hope and dream is that it's not just the place that is founded on his extraordinary legacy," said Donna Langley, chairman of NBCUniversal Entertainment & Studios. "But it is the place of future hopes and dreams of filmmakers and storytellers who are going to take this company into the next 100 years and the 100 years after that, people who come with a hope and a dream, people who have been inspired by Steven." Spielberg's 2001 modest box office hit AI Artificial Intelligence was a meditation on love, loss and what it means to be human through the eyes of a discarded humanoid robot. In the Pinocchio-like journey set in a futuristic dystopia, David, the android boy, yearns to be human, searching for love, in a world of machines and artificial intelligence. The film hit screens when AI was still in its nascent stages and predated the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT by 21 years. "It wasn't about artificial intelligence as much as it was about sentient existence, and can you love a sentient entity? Can a mother love a robot child?" Spielberg said. "It was not really where AI is taking us today. Eventually, there will be a convergence between AI and robotics." Spielberg said AI can be a great tool "if used responsibly and morally" to help find a cure for cancer and other diseases. "I just draw a line - and it's not a line of cement, it's just a little bit of line in the sand - which gives me some wiggle room to say (that) I have the option to revise this thinking in the future," he said. "But right now, I don't want AI making any creative decisions." He said he has seen, first-hand, how technology can replace human talent while working on the 1993 film Jurassic Park. Spielberg initially planned to use renowned stop-motion clay animation artist Phil Tippett to create the dinosaurs roaming the island theme park. Visual effects artist Dennis Muren proposed an alternative method, using Industrial Light & Magic's computer-generated imagery to create realistic dinosaurs. The director is an executive producer in Jurassic World: Rebirth which reaches theatres on July 2. "That kind of made certain careers somewhat extinct," Spielberg said. "So, I'm very sensitive to things that AI may do to take work away from people." Spielberg said he has yet to use AI on any of his films so far although he is open to possible applications of it behind-the-scenes, in functions like budgeting or planning. "I don't want to use it in front of the camera right now," Spielberg said. "Not quite yet."
Perth Now
3 hours ago
- Perth Now
Spielberg opposed to using AI in front of the camera
When Steven Spielberg directed the film AI Artificial Intelligence, the technology was the stuff of science fiction - a device to tell a story about the ethics of creating sentient machines. Now, AI is a concrete reality in Hollywood - one where Spielberg said he has drawn a line in the sand. "I don't want AI making any creative decisions that I can't make myself," Spielberg said in an interview with Reuters. "And I don't want to use AI as a non-human collaborator, in trying to work out my creative thinking." Spielberg spoke on Thursday after a ceremony dedicating the Steven Spielberg Theater on the Universal Studios lot. The event acknowledged the director's decades-long relationship with the studio, which released such films as Jaws, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The acclaimed director joked that his career at Universal began in 1967, when he took a tour of the lot as a high school student. He said he hid in the bathroom during a break, and waited for the tour to move on without him, "then I had the entire lot to myself that day". "Our hope and dream is that it's not just the place that is founded on his extraordinary legacy," said Donna Langley, chairman of NBCUniversal Entertainment & Studios. "But it is the place of future hopes and dreams of filmmakers and storytellers who are going to take this company into the next 100 years and the 100 years after that, people who come with a hope and a dream, people who have been inspired by Steven." Spielberg's 2001 modest box office hit AI Artificial Intelligence was a meditation on love, loss and what it means to be human through the eyes of a discarded humanoid robot. In the Pinocchio-like journey set in a futuristic dystopia, David, the android boy, yearns to be human, searching for love, in a world of machines and artificial intelligence. The film hit screens when AI was still in its nascent stages and predated the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT by 21 years. "It wasn't about artificial intelligence as much as it was about sentient existence, and can you love a sentient entity? Can a mother love a robot child?" Spielberg said. "It was not really where AI is taking us today. Eventually, there will be a convergence between AI and robotics." Spielberg said AI can be a great tool "if used responsibly and morally" to help find a cure for cancer and other diseases. "I just draw a line - and it's not a line of cement, it's just a little bit of line in the sand - which gives me some wiggle room to say (that) I have the option to revise this thinking in the future," he said. "But right now, I don't want AI making any creative decisions." He said he has seen, first-hand, how technology can replace human talent while working on the 1993 film Jurassic Park. Spielberg initially planned to use renowned stop-motion clay animation artist Phil Tippett to create the dinosaurs roaming the island theme park. Visual effects artist Dennis Muren proposed an alternative method, using Industrial Light & Magic's computer-generated imagery to create realistic dinosaurs. The director is an executive producer in Jurassic World: Rebirth which reaches theatres on July 2. "That kind of made certain careers somewhat extinct," Spielberg said. "So, I'm very sensitive to things that AI may do to take work away from people." Spielberg said he has yet to use AI on any of his films so far although he is open to possible applications of it behind-the-scenes, in functions like budgeting or planning. "I don't want to use it in front of the camera right now," Spielberg said. "Not quite yet."
ABC News
3 hours ago
- ABC News
The economic reform round table should discuss AI and robots, not just tax and productivity
Let's hope the economic reform round table in August does not turn into a three-day argument about tax reform. Nobody can ever agree on whether a sustainable budget is best achieved by less spending or more tax, let alone what taxes should be increased or new ones imposed. The 25 citizens in the assembly would be better off trying to come up with a decent set of policies on artificial intelligence and robots. And they could start with a briefing about what US President Donald Trump will reveal in his AI Action Plan to be announced on July 23, and follow up with a rundown on China's eight-year-old strategy to become the global leader in AI by 2030. As for the five reports on productivity's five pillars commissioned from the Productivity Commission by Jim Chalmers in December, and the 453 ideas people have sent in, a way for PC chair Danielle Wood to instil a sense of urgency into the round table might be to read out this article from the Financial Times last week about Meta Platforms Inc offering as much as $150 million sign-on bonuses for AI engineers working for the developer of ChatGPT, OpenAI. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is trying to build a team that will help him create AI that is smarter than human beings. And the staff at OpenAI have apparently been knocking him back! The combined market value of the five leading AI companies – Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Nvidia – is $20 trillion, almost twice the value of all houses and units in Australia. The only way any of this makes sense is that Meta, OpenAI and the other peddlers of AI are going make more money from it than from any other technological revolution in history. And the only reason the rest of the business world will pay so much money for AI software and robots is because they will make even more money by replacing humans and increasing the productivity of those still employed. There are two ways of applying AI in a business: top down and bottom up. At the risk of over-simplifying it (but not much) top-down involves a business's executive leadership team deciding to use AI to replace a bunch of human workers by, say, getting it to write software code, or do data entry, answer phone calls or write articles like this one. Bottom-up is where individual employees use AI to become better at their jobs. The key to making the bottom-up use of AI work is writing a good prompt, which is rapidly becoming one of the more important modern workplace skills. An AI consulting business called Fourday is building a 'prompt library' for clients and has developed a prompt writing assistant called Prompt Cowboy. You write into it a sort of lazy, plain language prompt and it spits out a much longer one that is better designed to get the best answer from the AI. ChatGPT performs better with a more detailed, better-written prompt. Fourday founder Henry Badgery says it is possible to get productivity increases of 30-40 per cent with AI but many businesses are reporting no extra value at all because: "You're not using it correctly. You're not asking the right questions because that's essentially what a prompt is, you're asking it the right question, you're giving it the right information to answer your question." If the round table is going to be pragmatically useful in lifting productivity, it should do two things: first, develop a national system for helping small to medium enterprises and employees to write better AI prompts, and second, modernise the welfare safety net so people don't have to be scared of it, allowing companies to replace workers with AI without worrying about contributing to societal breakdown. Specifically, the government needs to rethink unemployment benefits. The current JobSeeker system is not fit for purpose because it's assumed to be a temporary payment for a job seeker. The money is not enough, and the points system that includes the need to apply for four jobs each month won't work if there aren't any jobs to apply for. A Universal Basic Income for everyone, as some are pushing, is going too far, but the government needs to prepare for a period of more permanent unemployment – even if it's not needed in the end because AI does not cause mass unemployment. Business executives and staff need to embrace AI and a good safety net is needed for that to happen. It's another reason for more tax revenue, along with the need for more public housing. And more tax revenue comes down to a new tax – either a wealth or inheritance tax – or increasing the GST. Australia's two previous bouts of major tax reform when tax revenue was falling short of government spending also involved new taxes: capital gains and fringe benefits in 1985 and GST in 2000. Twenty-five years later revenue is short again because of the aging of the population, the NDIS and the decision to increase defence spending. But the near-hysterical response to the plan to reduce the tax break on superannuation balances above $3 million suggests that a new wealth or inheritance tax is too hard. Lifting the GST rate towards the global average of 15-20 per cent is what it will probably have to be. The problem with GST is that it's regressive – it hits the poor more than the well-off. But there is a solution to that, invented by UNSW Professors Richard Holden and Rosalind Dixon. In their book From Free to Fair Markets Holden and Dixon suggest increasing the GST rate to 15 per cent and applying it to all goods and services, but only levying it on spending above a threshold of $12,000 per year. How? By giving back each taxpayer 15 per cent of $12,000, or $1,800, each year, preferably in two six-monthly payments of $900 – simply put it in their bank accounts. Holden and Dixon have modelled the outcome and say the higher GST on a broader base would double GST revenue from $90 billion to $180 billion and that the refunds would give back half that, leaving $45 billion in net extra revenue which they say could be spent on income tax cuts and eliminating the budget deficit. Whether $12,000 ($1,000 per month) is the right threshold for GST-free spending could be debated, but the idea is worth spending an hour or two on at the round table. Then the 25 round tablers could get on with the real business of AI and robots. Alan Kohler is finance presenter and columnist on ABC News and he also writes for Intelligent Investor.
