He’s not anti-tech, he just thinks songwriting should stay human, even if that makes it harder.
He described it as a “deal with the devil,” arguing that artists leaning on AI risk undermining the very thing that gives their work value. For Corgan, songwriting isn’t meant to be efficient—it’s meant to be difficult.
A big part of his argument comes down to process. He sees doubt, pressure, and that feeling of running out of ideas as essential to making something worthwhile.
That internal struggle is what pushes artists into new territory. Remove it, and you risk ending up with something that works on paper, but doesn’t land emotionally.
He also drew a line between working with AI and working with other people. Even when collaboration gets messy – arguments over direction, credits, or money – there’s still something real being created between humans.
That, to him, holds more weight than anything generated by a system.
There’s also a broader concern about where this all leads. Corgan questioned what happens to the music economy if AI starts replicating human output at scale, and whether artists end up sidelined in the process.
He framed it bluntly: by feeding these systems, musicians could be contributing to their own redundancy.
It’s consistent with where he’s always sat – leaning toward raw, human-made work over anything too polished or synthetic.
Not everyone agrees, and plenty of artists are already experimenting with AI in their workflow.
But Corgan’s take taps into a wider tension around how far technology should go in shaping creative work.
For now, he’s sticking to the version of songwriting he knows – flaws, pressure, and all.
