Music producer and rapper Timbaland already has four Grammy Awards to his credit without taking help of artificial intelligence. But he believes in the new technology to cross future milestones. His new AI entertainment company is called Stage Zero, which has an AI-generated “artiste” who goes by the name TaTa.

Founded with his current creative partner, Zayd Portillo, and film producer Rocky Mudaliar, Timbaland says TaTa is the first of many personae launched by the company. The team behind Stage Zero dreams of other characters becoming virtual influencers, even starring in movies and TV shows.  “Ultimately, what Tim’s here to do is to pioneer a new genre of music — A-pop, artificial pop,” Mudaliar told The Rolling Stone.

A few months ago, Timbaland was on The Inner Court podcast, where he said he finds new music artistes to be very “uninspiring” and their music “soulless”. He thought AI could do better.

Stage Zero is coming at a time when a war against AI music tools is on. Billboard reports that three major music companies — Sony Music, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group — are in talks with AI music companies Suno and Udio to license their works as training data, despite suing the two startups for infringement “on an almost unimaginable scale” last summer.

Last year, a group of more than 200 high-profile musicians signed an open letter calling for protections against the exploitative use of artificial intelligence that mimics human artistes’ voices and sound. The signatories include Billie Eilish, Stevie Wonder and REM. The estates of Frank Sinatra and Bob Marley are also signatories.

In March last year, Tennessee became the first US state to have legislation to protect musicians from having their vocal likeness generated by AI for commercial purposes. The Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security Act or Elvis Act makes it illegal to replicate the voices of artistes without their consent.

Timbaland made an AI-generated Biggie Smalls track in 2023, which was critcised. He said AI voice filters would “open up an unprecedented world of creativity in music” and hoped his startup would “usher in the new era”.

ABBA member Bjorn Ulvaeus is also experimenting with AI. After bringing a hologram version of the group to a venue in east London, he is writing a musical with the help of artificial intelligence.

The 80-year-old musician told an audience at SXSW London that he was “three-quarters” of the way through writing a new musical which he has created with assistance from AI songwriting tools. He spoke about his love-hate relationship with the technology, which has limitations when it comes to songwriting (“lousy at [writing a whole song]” and “very bad at lyrics”) but it is helpful whenever he reaches a creative impasse.

“It’s fantastic. It is such a great tool,” he said. “It is like having another songwriter in the room with a huge reference frame. It is really an extension of your mind. You have access to things that you didn’t think of before.”