Glen Benton on A.I. Album Art Controversy: “Bad Press is Good Press”
Artificial intelligence, or A.I., is becoming more controversial every day in terms of its use in art. The common complaint is that it learns from real artists and then replaces their hard work, essentially cutting human artists out of something that they helped build. People who use A.I. tend to defend themselves by painting anyone who complains about it as some sort of technology-fearing luddite, which avoids the real issue at hand.
But Deicide’s Glen Benton has a different tactic to defend the A.I. art the band used as the album cover for their latest release Banished By Sin: say you were being intentionally provocative and call your critics crybabies.
In a recent interview with Belgian Jasper, Benton had this to say about the controversy surrounding the album artwork (as transcribed by Blabbermouth):
“For me, I’m an artist. I come from a family of artists. I love art. I go to museums. I’m into that. To me, it’s more deeper than what’s on the surface.
“We live in a day and age of bandwagon years — everybody’s just ready to jump on the next bandwagon — and I knew it was gonna disturb people. And that’s the whole point of it, man. Art is supposed to get you thinking, and that’s where I am. I’m not gonna dumb down my artistic creativity just because somebody finds it offensive or I didn’t use their cousin who draws anime or whatever. I mean, this is about art, man.
“If you ask an artist to draw a picture of something for you and they do it in a way where it really creates controversy, you’ve done your job, man. And the fact that I got all these crybabies constantly trying to…
“We gave all the wrong people a voice — that’s all I can say. There’s some people that really just don’t need to be heard from in society, and we gave those people — those unhappy, angry, mean, upset, self-loathing individuals — we gave them all an avenue, and it’s just a sad commentary on life right now.
“Me and [DEICIDE drummer] Steve [Asheim], every time we do a record, it’s, like, ‘Okay. How long is it gonna take before they call me this or they say we’re this?’
“You know what? Bad press is good press. I learned that on my first album. So if people are talking and people are disturbed, listen, man, you did a good job. And that’s how I [see it]. I don’t need to read all the shitty comments on YouTube or wherever else to know that I did something [worthwhile].”
The jury’s still out as to whether or not the bad press for Banished By Sin resulted in more record sales. You can check out the full interview below.
