ABBA's Bjorn Ulvaeus has hailed AI as "such a great tool", and is even writing a new musical using it.
Ulvaeus spoke about this project while attending London's edition of SXSW yesterday, which is taking place at Shoreditch this week. He also revealed that he was "three quarter" of the way through working on the follow up to the band's hologram based concert series, 'ABBA Voyage'.
“It is such a great tool", Ulvaeus stated. "It is like having another songwriter in the room with a huge reference frame,” he said. “It is really an extension of your mind. You have access to things that you didn’t think of before".
On the downside to using AI, Ulvaeus noted that it is "lousy at writing a whole song" and "very bad at lyrics", but added that it is helpful to artists who are battling with writer's block.
“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,” he explained. “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".
Last month, ABBA celebrated the third anniversary of their acclaimed Voyage Show, with a VIP party, which included a special performance from Benny Andersson, alongside Elvis Costello and Elbow's Guy Garvey. More on this here.
Back in April, Bjorn Ulvaeus opened up about feeling "troubled" over "severe problems" with the age gap between him and his wife Christina Sas when they first met. Sas is 52 years old, while Ulvaeus is 79. More on this story here.
