Dr. Dre Joins the Chorus Defending AI

Hip-hop producer and Aftermath founder Dr. Dre told the New York Times he doesn't see AI as a threat, comparing the pushback to past resistance against drum machines and synthesizers.

"I think the only people that see it as a threat are the people who have trouble creating," he said, adding that he's already using AI in the studio "as a tool to see what it would do with what I just did."

His longtime business partner Jimmy Iovine backed him up in the same interview, going a step further by naming Timbaland as another top-tier producer proudly using the technology and suggesting there are "a lot of closet AI producers out there."

Dre's comments land as one of the highest-profile endorsements yet from a music-business mainstay rather than a tech outsider, at a moment when labels, unions, and independent artists remain locked in lawsuits over AI's use of copyrighted material.

Worth noting: as with most producer-side AI use, this isn't about typing prompts into Suno — it's AI folded into the same studio process Dre's used to build records for decades, a distinction that tends to get lost in the broader "AI music" conversation.