Teddy Swims Draws Backlash For Promoting 'Truly Amazing' AI Tools To Create Music

Singer Teddy Swims is facing backlash online after promoting the use of AI to create music.

During a conversation at SXSW Sydney, the "Lose Control" singer opened up about how he and his team have used powerful artificial intelligence systems to tweak parts of his music.

Teddy Swims' recent admission about using AI in his music comes amid other artists' growing concerns about how artificial intelligence might severely impact their industry.

During Swims' conversation with his manager and creative partner, Luke Conway, and host Lucy Blakiston, the Billboard charting singer opened up about how "truly amazing" AI is—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 "super helpful" for them.

One example of AI being a useful tool for Swims occurred when he needed to change a lyric in one of his songs but couldn't make it to the studio in America because he was in Sydney, Australia. "Rather than me going [to] the studio and doing the line 15 times and spending that time and money and effort, he's actually been able to go in and just change the word," he said.

Swims' use of AI extends far beyond changing one lyric in a song. According to the "Bed On Fire" singer, he's also used AI to help him visualize how a song he's 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 just get the song done and upload it into it 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 helps save him and his team significant time, money, and energy. "Instead of taking time to reproduce something over and over and over again in so many different ways that would take months sometimes to do, you can get the idea of what something would be fully fleshed out in this lane," he said.

There's one part of the AI trend Swims isn't a fan of, however, and that's creators making AI-generated videos of him and using his voice. In fact, he expressed frustration over an incident where he found a video of himself online that he wanted to use. "And I was like, I could probably just maybe take this chorus and rework it and write some 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 just sounds like b-llsh-t," he said.

His complaint, though, seemed to bother some users online, who slammed the singer for appearing hypocritical. "AI art advocate is a hypocrite. More at 11," someone wrote on Reddit. "He's not called Teddy Thinks," another user said.

"You can't have it both ways," 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, sure, but definitely not an artist."

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

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

His success, though, isn't sitting well with real-life Christian artists like Forrest Frank, who claimed Ray's music is soulless because it does not "have the Holy Spirit inside of it."

Another artist who isn't thrilled about the use of AI in music is the iconic Cher. According to an earlier report from The Blast, Cher slammed artificial intelligence systems after hearing an AI version of herself perform a cover of a Madonna song.

"Someone did me singing a Madonna song and it was kind of shocking. They didn't have it down perfectly. But also, I've spent my entire life trying to be myself, and now these a—— are going to go take it? And they'll do my acting and they'll do my singing? And I mean, it's just… it's out of control," she said.