Highlights
- Madonna calls AI “the opposite of making art” in a new Vogue Italia interview.
- She links algorithms and streaming metrics to a loss of creative risk-taking.
- The pop icon says stillness, nature, and human connection fuel her imagination.
Madonna has never been one to soften her opinions, and her latest thoughts on artificial intelligence are no exception. The Queen of Pop is sounding off on the technology taking over the music industry, and she’s not impressed.
In a new interview with Vogue Italia, Madonna said that relying on AI is the “opposite of making art.”
The 67-year-old icon tied her criticism of AI to a broader lament about how the music business has lost its soul. “Once you were around painters and musicians and dancers and artists in one place and working from a very pure place for each other. I value that experience a lot,” she said. “Nowadays you don’t do that anymore. Now to have a record deal you think about how many followers you have.”
For Madonna, the creep of algorithms and AI into the creative process is part of the same problem. “That’s why in ‘Bring Your Love’ I say, ‘Don’t try to distract me with numbers.’ For me it started not thinking about the charts, the streaming numbers. Algorithms and artificial intelligence are the opposite of taking risks and to me that is the opposite of making art,” she said.
The remarks land just days before the July 3 release of her highly anticipated 15th studio album, Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II, a follow-up to her 2005 classic produced again with Stuart Price. The timing is pointed: Madonna is actively pushing back against the industry machinery just as she prepares to reenter it on her own terms.
She also opened up about the creative conditions she needs to make good work, and they have nothing to do with screens or servers. “Lately it’s been hard because of my record and so many things connected to it. But I do like to take breaks and disappear. Because that’s how you fuel your imagination,” Madonna explained. “You have to have stillness and you have to have days where you’re just connecting to nature, my children, my horses.”
Her AI thoughts are consistent with a tech skepticism she has voiced more than once. During a Q&A at the premiere of her film Confessions II: The Film, Madonna said social media has instilled a “persistent need” in people to document everything and encouraged the fans in attendance to “put your fucking phones down and connect.”
The Vogue Italia interview adds to a growing chorus of major artists who have spoken out against AI’s encroachment on music, filmmaking, and visual art. But coming from Madonna, an artist who has spent four decades navigating industry reinvention while fiercely protecting her creative autonomy, the message carries particular weight.
She is not just nostalgic. She’s making a deliberate argument: that risk-taking and human imperfection are what make art matter, and that no algorithm can replicate either.
