The Journal. - Hans Zimmer Isn’t Scared of AI

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

Hans Zimmer, Academy Award-winning composer, and Golnar Khosrowshahi, CEO of Reservoir Media, discuss AI in the music industry, why human creation is still unique and whether or not Zimmer approves of “The Journal” theme music. Further Listening: -Artificial: The OpenAI Story -When AI Comes for Your Art Further Reading: -Hans Zimmer, Movie Maestro -Music Labels Take On AI Startups With New Lawsuits Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Lion King, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator, The Dark Knight, Interstellar, Dune. What do all these blockbusters have in common? Hans Zimmer. Zimmer has scored more than 150 films in his career, and is arguably the most influential composer in Hollywood. He has tons of fans, some detractors, and a lot of copycats. These days, there's a new copycat in town, artificial intelligence.

Last year, an AI company tried to compose a major movie soundtrack in the style of Zimmer. And this has broad implications for Zimmer and the company with rights to his music, Reservoir Media. So let's ask Hans Zimmer himself and Reservoir Media CEO Goldner Kosra Shahi. Are they afraid of AI? From the Wall Street Journal's Tech Live Conference, welcome to a special taping of the journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Leimbach, Hans Zimmer, Goldner Koshat Rahi.

Welcome to the show. Courage, I learned it from my adoptive mom. Hold my hand. You hold my hand. Woo! Learn about adopting a team from foster care at adoptUSkids.org. You can't imagine the reward. Brought to you by AdoptUSkids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council.

Golnar Hans, thanks for joining us. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Before we get started, what did you think of our theme song? Too much bass. Okay. You can do better. Oh, wow. Okay, Bern, we're going to start this way. Golnar, will you license it, you reckon?

Will we license it? Yes. Thank you. Okay. A few, before we start talking about AI, I wanted to talk about humans. And a few weeks ago, for Hans's birthday, he played at Hans Zimmer Live at Madison Square Garden. Has anybody here been to a Hans Zimmer Live event? Okay. At that event, you told a story about a block you had on Wonder Woman and how you

reached out to a cellist to help you unlock it. Can you tell us what happened? Well, it's rather obvious. I mean, the movie is called Wonder Woman. And I look at myself and I go, nothing, wonder, nothing, woman. And after two weeks of mucking about, I remember my cellist friend, Tina Gow, who is one of the most beautifully elegant, graceful, soft-spoken, gentle people in the world until she picks up her cello and it's like a sword and it's like a weapon. And I went, of course, of course, call Tina. She is Wonder Woman.

And after two weeks of struggling, it took us, the two of us, about an hour to go and do what... By the way, half of the string section from my show just played for you. Yeah. So let's hear your cellist, Tina Guo, shred it up on the cello. A lot of bass. A lot of bass. A lot of bass.

I hope you still believe me that this is the gentlest, most refined person. I know Tina, she, as he said, the cellist is certainly her weapon. But this is inspiration from a real human. Has a robot ever inspired you like that? Different, different things. I mean, you know, it's an interesting question because I started making music when synthesizers became the big enemy of, you know, I started in London as a session musician and I was the synth guy and most people looked at me

like, ooh, here he comes, he's going to take our job away. As opposed to going, oh, really interesting, here's another color that we're going to add into the orchestra. I think it's actually not just technologies. Everything is always the same. We always have a fear of the new, you know? And then very often, quite rightly so, but very often we will figure out a way where it becomes part of what makes us human. Golnar, what's the business case for human music makers? Golnar, what's the business case for human music makers? The business case is about the emotional depth.

It's about the nuanced skill that is particular to Hans that is actually composition and scoring. And then the other thing I would add is that AI in particular is trained on material from the past. Hans is not, I'm not speaking for you, but everything that I've heard is that he is looking to create something new. So the technology can't really innovate a new instrument, a new sound and create that collaboration because it's only human imagination that has that vision. It's like you led into where we're going here because I wanted to talk about Dune 2

in which you actually invented or modified some existing instruments. Build. Oh, we are going to put a picture of it up here. What do you got? Oh, yeah. There we go. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Can you describe this pipe that Pedro made with epoxy putty from maybe from Home Depot? I don't know. It was definitely from Home Depot. Okay. It's based on I think an older instrument, a pipe called a duduk. No, it's Armenian. Oh, it's what he does is he plays a duduk which is roughly 3,000 years old. It's obviously pre-Christian Armenian instrument. And it's so simple. It's a stick with some holes in it and two reeds at the top, and it's unbelievably simple.

And if you blow into it, if I blow into it, people will run away, right? When Pedro blows into it, and this is where it becomes interesting for me, with Pedro somehow pouring his heart. It's not technique, it's beyond technique because it's only a stick with some holes. So not a lot of practice. Well let's hear it. I mean, to me, it's always been the the most soulful instrument

There is it's nearly a human voice. You were using this to For a sci-fi world for a planet that doesn't exist other composers have used the orchestra for sci-fi worlds like Yeah, yeah, I can get into I can get into big trouble right now. Well, then I think we encourage it. So, when I was a precocious teenager, which wasn't all that long ago, actually it was incredibly long ago, and I went to see certain sci-fi movies, I would say, in a galaxy far, far away,

in millions of years from now, and I would hear that typical, beautiful European orchestra strike up. I thought, really? We haven't come any further than this. We are still doing that in 10,000 years from now in a galaxy far, far away from here. One of the things for Dune was that I said to Denis, our director, I said, wouldn't it be interesting if we invented some things and at the same time if we used some things which seem to have stood the test of time. Something that is 3,000 years old, you can sort of imagine that it's still around in 10,000 years and might even travel to another galaxy or something else.

So you're throwing a little shade. Yeah. But I'm not, no, no, no, I'm saying, look, I loved those scores, I loved those movies, I'm not actually, I'm not throwing any shade, it's just, you know, when you're 13 years old you question things in the most, you know, sort of cheeky way, you know? Why am I hearing violins out in way, you know? Why am I hearing violins out in space? You know? I mean, that seems to be like an obvious question for a 13-year-old.

It's also that you don't think about the creation and just the music. It's also what's making the music. Absolutely. So what is AI's role in music making? I think AI, like all tools, is going to be completely dependent on how we approach it. You know, how we approach it. And there's so many things floating through my head with that question. I mean, you know, that is not an easy question to answer, even for AI, I think. I think we live in a strange time, but I think AI and music will become another great tool and great helper to help me figure out how to express emotion, you know, or give people an experience.

So would Hans Zimmer use AI in his own work? And if he found out that his music was used for AI models, would he sue? That's next. Do you use AI in your work? No, no, no? No, not really. It's... I tell you why. It's just out of hubris.

It's strictly that. Oh, God. It's confession time. I've never written a piece of music drunk, and I've never written a piece of music drunk and I've never written a piece of music on drugs so I would never write a piece of music using AI to help me because I wanted to be my piece. So now that doesn't mean if I used AI it wouldn't be a better piece, but I don't think it would be. Well, there was a director who, Gareth Edwards, who used AI to get a Hans Zimmer score for

the creator, and he said it was a seven out of 10. And if you want 10 out of 10. Well, I was a little exhausted about the 7 out of 10. Did you hear the AI creation, the Hans Zimmer? No, actually I never heard it. He was very good at making it disappear before I heard it. Do you worry that AI could get to 10 out of 10? Yes, I think, I hope AI gets to 10 out of 10.

Because I love spinal tap and I think we should go to 11. Right? It's a central center. AI doesn't think that it can do that. Because I asked it this morning. Oh, go on then. I asked it, who shall remain nameless, can AI create music as good as Hans Zimmer's scores? And it conceded that it has challenges. And four of them specified were its emotional depth,

that your scores are known for their emotional resonance, which is difficult for me to replicate without the human experience, contextual understanding, what I had said before about matching up the film and the narrative and the story and evoking the emotions of that story in the film through the music, innovative instrumentation, so exactly what we just saw, and a collaborative process. You're working in a studio where you're bringing in a lot of other musicians and you can't do that through the chat box.

Have you had your music be part of an AI model? I have on purpose not checked because if it is, and I'm pretty sure it is, it'll just make me mad. And you could do something about it. I could do something about it, but the thing I learned a long time ago, it's rather than calling up the lawyers, I'd rather sit down and write another piece of music. I mean, it's...

The models that are out there are being trained. Yeah. But without licenses and without any permissions. Yeah, I know that. And that's what I did. Yeah. Would you consider legal remedies? It's not about a legal remedy.

I don't think that's a solution today. This is technology that is here to stay. We need to embrace it. There are B2B solutions that help our businesses. They don't replace the composer. They make us more efficient. Yes, we are in the music business, but we are in a data business. Our most important asset is our music, which in its pieces is in data form.

Our job is to obviously advocate for the IP and the protection of it. And we'll get there. I don't think it's really a fight today that is that necessary. I'd rather focus, as you said, on creating music and seeing where this goes. What will better and better 10 out of 10 AI mean for musicians and the orchestra? Well, that's the big mystery, isn't it? I mean, it's so interesting because it's called artificial intelligence. It's not called artificial experience, artificial emotion. It's not that. So once it starts doing that, because, you know, look, there's an enormous amount of music around that, you know, have been produced, you know, and I don't mean to be mean about it, but very little stands out.

And the stuff that stands out is, it rises by itself. And I'm not sure if, I mean, yes, it would be really interesting to have a piece of AI move me deeply, you know? Truly touch my heart or, you know, not even that. It's like, you know, where I can say this is a piece of art that is changing, you know, humanity. This is something, this is a piece of art that means something like Guanerica meant something, you know. It doesn't have to, you know, we opposed to this is advancing just our technology.

Right. And there's some new technology out there that needs sounds, and you have made some sounds for this new technology. It's something high tech. It's always an embarrassing moment. So let's listen to this sound and imagine what it could be. What's that? Who knows what it is? Anybody?

Yeah? BMW. You got it right. So BMW came to me with a really interesting proposition. Electric cars or hydrogen, I don't care what it is, silent cars. And I thought, oh, this is interesting, because at the end of the day, we can't actually be completely silent, because otherwise, we're going to go and kill somebody. So we do need to have sound, but what we could do is we can bring an aesthetic

to the sound that we've never been able to do. To be really honest, I love the adventure of going over to BMW and being able to play around with what they're doing. It's as exciting for me as composing a piece of music because it's, you know, it's that stuff I love, love sound, you know? What does AI sound like to you? Well, AI right now… No, no, like you're composing the sound of AI. Well, if… I was going to answer you by saying that at this very moment in time, AI doesn't have a sound because the sound it has is a sound of the past.

And that's wrong. The sound for AI should not be here yet. It should be forward-looking. It should be what we can't imagine. It should be what the future is. And I don't think we're there yet. Do you think we're there? No, I mean, AI is trained on models of the past.

It doesn't have the imagination, but I think it's sound and what represents it doesn't exist yet. Maybe it requires us to go to Home Depot. Well Han Skolnar, thank you so much. Thank you. Big round of applause. Thank you. Appreciate you coming.

That's all for today, Friday, October 25th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. The shows made by Catherine Brewer, Jonathan Davis, Pia Gadkari, Rachel Humphries, Ryan Knutson, Matt Kwong, Jessica Mendoza, Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Sarah Platt, Alan Rodriguez Espinosa, Alessandra Rizzo, Heather Rogers, Pierce Singie, Jeevika Verma, Lisa Wang, Katherine Whalen, Tatiana Zimis, and me, Kate Limbaugh, with help from Trina Menino. Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan

Singapok, and Peter Leonard. Video editing in this episode from Stefano Sanchez. Our theme music is by So Wiley. Additional music this week from Katherine Anderson, Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord, Emma Munger, Griffin Tanner, and Blue Dot Sessions. Fact-checking by Mary Mathis. Thanks for listening. See you Monday.