Nick Cave has never hidden how he feels about AI songwriting. This month he went further than ever. In Issue #381 of The Red Hand Files, the newsletter where he answers fans’ letters, the Australian songwriter called Suno “the Great Cancellator” and described AI song generators as “indicators of this nascent technology’s demonic potential to hollow out human endeavour and sever our connection to the divine”.
It is one of the strongest statements yet from a major artist against AI music platforms, and it comes from one of Australia’s most respected songwriters during a busy week for the debate. Here is what Cave wrote, how other artists see it differently, and what it means for people who make and listen to AI-assisted music.
What Nick Cave wrote
The issue began with a question from a fan named Nuno in Porto, Portugal, about whether we can separate the art from the artist when an artist we admire behaves badly. Cave said we cannot: art and artists are “as inseparable as the waves from the sea they rise from”. For him, the matter was settled.
“Until now,” he wrote. Song generation platforms, he argued, have upended the question, because the artist “can be removed from the equation altogether, like so much dross”.
“Suno, the Great Cancellator, which has never loved or laughed or grieved, never experienced joy or loss or heartbreak, never felt boredom or its adjacent epiphany, produces an imitation of the soul – a song – in fifteen seconds flat. This is an affront to any songwriter who has lived and struggled in this world and earned the right to create a song.” — Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files, Issue #381
Answering a second fan, Catherine, who asked where he stood on AI, Cave was less certain about the technology as a whole. AI “may save the world, annihilate it, or do something in between. I don’t know,” he wrote. But on song generators his view was firm: “They mock creation itself by rendering humanity unnecessary, taking the fruits of human striving and reducing them to mere products. It is, perhaps, our final, most soul-destroying humiliation.”
He ended on a pointed note. For “those eager to rid the world of problematic artists”, Cave wrote, these platforms must be “cause for celebration”, because they “promise to rid the world of artists altogether”.
Not his first warning
Cave has been making this case for years. In January 2023, in Issue #218 of The Red Hand Files, a fan sent him a song that ChatGPT had written “in the style of Nick Cave”. He replied that songs “arise out of suffering” and that “data doesn’t suffer”, and called the result “a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human”.
The difference now is the target. In 2023 he was responding to a chatbot writing lyrics. In 2026 he is naming a dedicated music platform that generates complete songs, vocals and all, from a text prompt.
Dr Dre sees it very differently
Cave’s comments arrived in the same week as a very different view from one of hip-hop’s most influential producers. On the debut episode of Listen & Laugh, the new podcast hosted by Ice Cube and comedian Mike Epps, Dr Dre said he was “extremely excited” about AI, MusicRadar reports.
“This is just a whole new level of creativity that we have to get used to,” Dre said. “You have to get used to it, or you’re gonna be left behind.” He compared AI to sampling and said that if someone used AI to copy his production style, “I would respect that.”
Ice Cube was not convinced. He argued there is a difference between the creativity of working an existing sample into a new track and simply typing prompts into an AI tool. The exchange captures the split running through the music world: is AI another instrument, or a replacement for the musician?
Suno’s position
Suno has not publicly responded to Cave’s newsletter as of 11 November 2026. Responding to separate lawsuits filed on 6 November by Elvis Presley rights holders and Eminem’s publisher Eight Mile Style, a Suno spokesperson told Variety that the company “exists to help people create new, original music, not to trade on anyone’s name or likeness”, and that it does not allow prompts for specific artists’ names and songs. Those lawsuits are allegations that have not been tested in court. We covered them in Elvis rights holders and Eminem’s publisher file new lawsuits against Suno.
Suno is also growing quickly. Variety reports that it raised US$400 million in June 2026 at a US$5.4 billion valuation, and that Warner Music Group settled its own case and struck a licensing deal with Suno last year.
The Australian backdrop
Cave’s words land in the middle of a heated Australian debate about AI and copyright. The federal government is consulting on how copyright should apply to AI training, and the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence is expected to release its findings in late November, Mixdown reports. This week Jimmy Barnes also weighed in, saying AI companies “should go and f*** themselves” amid fears the government could weaken copyright laws, according to The Music.
Global industry bodies are watching too. As we reported, the head of IFPI warned the government that weakening copyright for AI training would be a “disaster for creativity” (IFPI Warns Australia Not to Weaken Copyright for AI Training). Researchers at UNSW have proposed a framework called Copyright Plus, which would give creators the right to refuse AI training, require AI companies to disclose their data sources, and fund payments to artists through a levy on AI companies.
Why it matters
For songwriters and artists
Cave speaks for many artists who feel AI platforms threaten not just their income but the meaning of what they do. His argument is not mainly legal. It is about authorship: a song, in his view, is valuable because a person lived it. That idea is shaping policy as well as opinion. IFPI’s global chart principles require recordings to be substantially human made, and ARIA excludes wholly AI-generated recordings from its charts.
For creators who use AI tools
The debate is no longer abstract. Listeners, charts and platforms increasingly ask how a track was made and how much of it came from a person. If you use AI in your process, being open about your own contribution, such as your lyrics, melodies, arrangement and production choices, matters more than ever. Dre and Cave disagree about whether the tools belong in music at all, but both are really arguing about the same thing: where the human is in the work.
What happens next
Watch for the Joint Select Committee’s findings later this month, the government’s response to its copyright consultation, and the next steps in the lawsuits against Suno in the US. Cave’s Red Hand Files are also worth following. He tends to return to the subjects that matter most to him.
Hear AI-assisted music on Dizy
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Sources
The Music: Nick Cave says AI song generators ‘mock creation itself’ (10 November 2026)
MusicRadar: Ex-bandmates Dr Dre and Ice Cube clash over the use of AI (10 November 2026)
UNSW Newsroom: Copyright Plus proposes a fairer deal for creators in the age of AI (October 2026)
ABC News: Fully AI-generated music to be banned from ARIA charts (25 August 2026)
