This session at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2026 examines the relationship between digital technologies and creative practices.
At Davos 2026, Juliet Mann moderated a discussion on how AI is reshaping music, creativity, and power. Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. described the moment as “fearful but optimistic,” arguing AI can expand access while increasing the need for “guardrails” around consent, credit, and compensation. will.i.am warned that early AI is mostly “regurgitation of imagination,” mimicking today’s recording industry rather than creating a new one. Both agreed the scarce asset will shift from production capability to human judgment: “Taste, discernment, decision making,” Mason said, will separate amateurs from creators who use AI to make “things you’ve never heard before.”
The panel debated what remains uniquely human. will.i.am emphasized AI’s advantage in optimizing for algorithms and personalization, predicting it will generate content “specifically for certain demographics” and even compose to individuals’ biology. Yet he argued live, embodied interaction is “AI proof,” because it relies on real-time emotion and presence. Mason added that authenticity will carry a “premium” as machine-made content floods the market.
On governance, Mason confirmed the Grammys currently allow AI-assisted entries but require a human component. Their core advice: learn the tools, own your data, and “be unpredictable.”
Hello, I'm Juliet Mann, the presenter of our daily business show and weekly current affairs talk show The Agenda on CGTN, China's international channel. And I am delighted to be here with you at the World Economic Forum in Davos to to moderate this session when code and creativity collide. Now artificial intelligence is moving faster than any technology we've seen. It's reshaping how we work, how we create, how value is generated. And few industries have really had the big impact of AI and felt that impact more than music. When AI can write, can produce, can even perform. So when AI created, artists like Sienna can be Spotify's most played artist, it raises a bigger question. And that's not just about music. It's about human creativity. It's about, ownership, and it's about power. In what is increasingly an AI driven economy. So that's why we have this panel today, and to help us explore what it means for creators, for companies, for culture. I'm joined by two leading champion creators working at different layers. I think of the music and technology ecosystem in no particular order. We have Harvey Mason Jr and Will. I am. Now, for those of you who don't know, Harvey Mason Jr is one of the most influential figures in modern music and a lifelong basketball fan and player. Right? CEO of the Recording Academy. He represents creators worldwide. He is himself a Grammy winning producer and songwriter whose work spans global superstars and generations. Now, AI is at the center of today's AI debate, as is he, and he is helping set the standards around credit, around fair compensation, around things like consent, shaping how technology and creativity can coexist. Are other tastemaker in the room is Will. I am a nine time Grammy winning artist and a serious technology founder and pioneer. I think you're a bit of a futurist, aren't you? CEO of FYI AI, an early force behind Beats by Dre before the $3 billion sale to Apple. And today he advises global companies on AI, on culture and the future of creativity. He's also a UN goodwill ambassador for AI skills, working at that intersection of music, technology and human potential. I think we should get started. I know both of you fully embrace the possibilities of AI, but Harvey, let me start with you. How scared are you about the effect that AI can have on music and on creativity?
Scared is an interesting word. I am fearful in some regards, but I'm also very optimistic. I think there's so much potential. I think there is a need for guardrails and to make sure that there are controls in place because as you said in your intro, thank you very much for the nice intro. I am a human creator. I love making music. I consider it an art form. I've worked years and years and years to perfect my craft, and I know Will has done the same. But I also see how AI and other technological advancements can be beneficial to creators that want to make great art. So fearful but optimistic.
But will AI is often framed as being either revolutionary or destructive. So I wonder from your perspective, what does it feel like? What does working with AI feel like to you, and what would you say is the most misunderstood thing about AI in terms of businesses? What do they get wrong?
Regurgitation of imagination. We're utilizing a super tool to just repeat what we did yesterday. The song structure is still the same song structure. When the recording industry did not, you know, champion itself on classical music song structure. We, the recording industry, deemed that industry classical classical music was not like, you know, we classical before recording industry it was just music. So we're seeing the start of AI just mimic what the recording industry did instead of just doing something new similar to Charlie Chaplin. Here's a guy that was like theatrical, right? And moved to Hollywood to create a new industry with nickelodeons and film. And the way that the stories were told was totally different than theater. Even though theater was made its way on film. But they couldn't because there was a limitation on film at the time. They couldn't do the whole entire play. So I see the same for what AI is supposed to be. It's supposed to be an industry of its own. So we should have four pillars by now publishing industry, touring industry, recording industry. This one not mimicking that one.
So what it's worth for itself, it's almost like it's looking for its own genre.
With all the technologies. There's always supposed to be a new genre as as dominant. And as amazing as technology is, there's not even a new genre. Yeah.
But I think if AI can generate songs, if it can generate beats, voices and my goodness, it can even generate a hit, what? What then becomes the scarce asset in music?
Taste, discernment, decision making, aggregating great ideas is what producers and songwriters have always done. Whether you're writing by yourself and you have 15 things, you get it out and it creates a song, or you are a Quincy Jones and you're getting ideas from different people and you're pulling that together to make a great work, or you're using a tool like AI and you're using that to create something really spectacular. I think you're going to see a lot more people making music because of AI and having access, and the technologies has allowed everyone access to the music creation and that process. But what you'll also see is a disparity between amateur music makers who just text something and it spits out a song, and people like Will or other incredible producers who are going to use the tool to make something new and different, similar to what he's talking about, things you've never heard before, things that are going to make others chase it. Make AI chase what will makes or another great producer. So I think that's a big part of how the tool is going to be used.
Is it a good thing or a bad thing if more people.
It's a great thing, more music, the better. It's amazing. My niece sends me songs every week. She's like, Harvey, look what I wrote last night. You know, she's texting something about something that happened at recess. Putting puts it to a track and she sends it to me, and she's proud and she's excited and she's expressing herself.
Is she going to get a Grammy?
No, she's not. That can happen.
What do you think, though? Well, what do you what do you what do you think? Is there a quality in music that AI can't authentically replicate? I'm thinking the human soul.
What? What era?
Right now?
Right now I could do exactly what we do right now. Because right now.
But you're talking about possibilities. Then you think so? Okay, then what time frame is it going to be able to do it?
All right, now we're chasing algorithms. You want to go viral. That's right. Now. And we guess we're guessing how to go viral. And if an AI it's not even fully autonomous yet. yet you're prompting now and a couple of moments you're not going to have to prompt. It's going to make stuff on its own, and it will understand the algorithm as the algorithm happens. We don't understand why the algorithm and what it is. We're guessing how to go viral. It will know exactly how to go viral. It will know all things at the same time. It will doctor things specifically for certain demographics, certain communities at the same time. And and so from that perspective, because we're chasing algorithms, we'll lose it will never, ever, ever rinse out its soul. So live improv, live moments is what we are human to human interactivity in space, spatial awareness, emotion, feelings, rinsing out. That's AI proof. The screen, the screen. You don't even know what's real anymore. It's indistinguishable. So from that perspective, if it's I love recordings. Recordings are awesome. But I also like live, live, live moments. How fast that person's brain's going. Like, yo, did you were you there that day? No I wasn't. For example, we love sports, and when you see a game, how many times you see it again, there's no need to see it again. It was supposed to be that moment. That's why we love sports. That's why it's AI proof. Like you don't even want to see a a human play an AI in chess, even though chess is better than humans.
But you know, what's interesting is, unlike sports, the reason we listen to music is there's an emotion attached to it, and that emotion is something we want to revisit.
Yeah.
Time and time again. So to your point, yes, live performance always going to be important. It's always going to be AI proof. But there's still got to be that human emotion in the music that is recorded so that it can connect and resonate with audiences and listeners.
I want to hear it again and again.
Yeah. But my okay, let's just rewind.
Go on.
What was life like in 1826 when there was no recording?
Come on, we're all old. We're not that old. No.
No, no. But still, you have to think about that. That wasn't that long ago. My grandmother's grandmother lived at what was life like 1726, 1626, 1526. What did humans do? What was the quarrel? It was church. It was community. It was. And and we didn't have to worry about birds, bears, lions competing even, no birds singing. Awesome. It wasn't our fear. It wasn't our worry. We weren't competing. Now there's something that could do exactly what we do with recordings, and do it at a scale that humans cannot. When I wrote Ordinary People with John Legend, that was my heartbreak. And then people listened to proximity, heartbreak, something that was close to theirs. AI is going to give you your heartbreak, your specific heartbreak, and so humans have to grapple with that. We have to grapple with like, yo, I wrote this song for me and I want everyone to listen to it. So now the audience is like, I got my song now, not just Billie Joe's this is your song. but you're really going to have your song now.
But the question will be, Will people care about heartbreak song written by AI machine?
No. So the narrative is going to change because it's going to be written by that person's data. Right now, we're thinking we're not thinking about how valuable our individual data is. There was never a system.
When you say data, what do you mean? This is not data in here? No. So this is my this is my life, my emotion, my.
Yeah. The thing is about AI is that we know that it's going to be able to create more ideas than, than a human person ever could. But what it can't do is create all of those choices. Not yet anyway. It can't make the choices about those ideas yet. So. So, Harvey, what part what's the part of create? What part of creativity is it that AI can't replicate for you? We're talking about this, the human spirit, that live element.
Yes. And I'm not going to say it can't replicate it because clearly it can. We're seeing songs on the charts that people are liking and loving and listening to. But at some point, I do believe authenticity and truth and emotion and humanity is going to be there's going to be a premium on that because it will resonate differently knowing that it's coming from someone's experience. So as far as what AI can and can't do, it can write all the, you know, basic lyrics. It can make all the basic sounds and production and chord progressions. So I don't think that's really going to be the question. And Will's probably seen even the next evolution of AI that most of us have not seen. So you can predict it's going to continue to get better and better and better. So only thing we can do is try and tell our stories in a unique and authentic way, and then continue to make new art that AI is not thinking about yet, because Will will tell you the AI is going to learn from what we do, from what we create, and at some point it's got to draw from previously created works.
You mentioned premium, so I just want to talk to you about that for a moment, because AI is going to dramatically lower the cost of being creative. So who benefits from that shift? Is it artists? Is it performers? Is it the labels.
Right now it's not the artists or the performers. Our hope is that it can be in the future. And people that have had incredible singing careers or songwriting careers can continue to monetize their IP or their voice or likeness. And those are things that we're hoping to build into guardrails or legislation.
So who's at risk if the industry gets it wrong?
So let's just back up for a second because you said something ignoring what has already happened before AI. So DSPs have devalued music. I remember what it was like selling records. Now I know what it's like when people rent music, and renting music has demolished what the value of music is. So an AI is not even here yet in the way that it's going to be. So AI hasn't even made music based on your genome. So we all have access to village AI ChatGPT we're all using AI llms and, diffusion models to make images, to make audio and to make sentences. Demis AlphaFold hasn't even been thrown into the mix. AlphaFold is how proteins fold. And when AI is making music composing to your DNA, we are sound harmonically in tune. When my cells vibrate at a disease that is truly a disease. And you can I could use AI to compose audio. What's happened to me happening to us individually? Cellularly and that composition harmonically. Listening to yourself. How you are vibrating is the type of creativity where the the future of music, it's it's when they say music is math, music is also cellular. Music is also organic. Like listening to how my organs are operating in the form of a song and seeing how the tension of how I'm feeling. We haven't even got there yet.
I can't wait to hear that.
How big is your imagination?
So you'll be able to hear how you breathe and hear if you have a common organs.
No, we're used to thinking we. We think music is just organs. No, bro, it's organs. You are your. You're a vessel. You're a moving orchestra. There's life living within you. And we haven't even begun to to to combine AI diffusion models with Llms and AlphaFold and AGI and quantum. We're not even there. So where is your. Oh.
I'm not sure. I'm not sure I even want to go there. Well.
You want to go there. Here's the reason why. Because it will help cure illnesses. Like how many people that are sick, like, yo, give me some music. Now they're going, you want what's the highest version of that? You want to hear your self at its highest vibration. Music is a tool for healing, aligning your chakra points. It's energy. We're not thinking big enough. We're thinking from a recorded recordings. No recordings. These are predictions.
So you're talking very much about the future being about humans harnessing the power of their own music, stuff that technology can help them maybe understand. But I'm thinking, Harvey, if there's voice cloning and style imitation, consent and ownership then become really blurred. So do you think there should be some rules of the road that need to be established now to be able to guide the creative industries in the future.
Countering how we normally would answer these answers on a on a panel, which is long winded responses, I'll say yes, absolutely. Of course, there's got to be regulations to make sure artists are protected and paid fairly and they have approvals. All those things have to happen.
So I would go even deeper. I think every single person needs to have some system that harnesses their individual data, their steps, not just giving your steps away to a company, your searches, your and to have searches. You need your own agent at home. You're not going to buy a house without a refrigerator. You're not going to buy a house without plumbing. You're not going to buy a house without, you know, air conditioning. So why would you buy a house without a data center or some server in it for your own AI? It's the most intimate thing that humans have ever had because it could predict you. So you're going to allow for a company to predict you. Why can't you? Why don't you want to be in power of your of your own trajectory? And from that perspective, every single person needs to be protected, not just musicians. My lawyer needs to be protected. My finance, the person who does my finance, my assistant needs to be protected. Not just the musicians. Every single person. Because a robot, they're not even walking amongst us. Yet. Here we are, 2026 Weaf. There's not a robot in the seats yet.
Not that you know. I mean.
No, by 20, by 2029, there will be robots walking these aisles. There'll be robots in the seat. We got to think. There'll be robots walking the streets at Weaf. They will have the same rights, because some company would have lobbied for them to have the same rights as individuals. And and they will be promptly. Where's your imagine this is what this is what we were talking about here at Weaf in 2015, 16, 17, 18, sorry, 1617, 1819 when we had Wef's AI council. So I sat on the board of Fourth Industrial Revolution here at Weaf and the AI Council before they they stopped it. We are not even where we're going to be yet. And it's right around the corner.
So it's right around the corner. This this future of unknowns. I want to bring it back to to music and to the, the creative arts. And let's hear again from you, Harvey, because someone once told me that you need three things to succeed. You need talent, you need hard work, and you need a little bit of luck. Well, you can't say I'm I'm going upstairs to get some luck. Right? So when it comes, you know, fast forward, fast forward, say five years, ten years time. What is a creator going to look like to you? Do you think it's going to look like a robot, or do you think it's essentially still going to be a human in an AI native world that can't rely on talent alone?
I think you'll see different types of creators, I really do. There's going to be the purists that wants to create in a traditional way, with traditional instruments from the past. There'll be people that will be using the technology that's available to them. You'll probably have robots and prompt lists and platforms creating music as well. But I sure hope, and I have to believe that humanity is going to persevere and survive, and we will get out of the loop of regurgitating imagination as well. So incredibly said, I think we are going to have to challenge ourselves to decide how are we going to use this talent? How are we going to do things differently? How are we going to come up with new sounds and use all these incredible tools that we have at our disposal? Because right now, just texting a platform to create a song that sounds like something that's already been done a thousand times, it's not that cool.
So you still need to embrace the technology and not be left behind.
You don't have to. I think you should. I think there will be people who don't, and there will be a whole market segment that wants to hear only purely human generated music, which is great. Much like now you got people who love EDM, which is all synthesized. You have people who love rock or alternative that is generally organic instruments. There's different sounds to different people.
But what Will was saying is that we almost it's going to be embedded into our daily life to such an extent that we're not going to be able to get away with not embracing it.
I won't go that far because there's still people who love to paint, still people who love to play the piano in their living room. And they're not just hearing recorded music.
So I think it's going to be we're going to have an onslaught of so much machine made music, prompt less music, and there's not going to be any type of indication on the differentiation, differentiation between human music and machine music. You go to the supermarket, there's organic oranges and then there's oranges. And no one ever asked like, okay, well, what the hell are those oranges? If this is an organic orange, right? Yeah. But at some point when my grandmother went to the supermarket, there was just oranges. There was no organic section.
Okay. But I think we're all we're a similar age. And back when we were younger, fruit and vegetables came by seasons. And if something was out of season, you couldn't have it. Now you can get oranges all year round. You can get strawberries all year round, but if it's out of season, it tastes of nothing. Don't you worry that that will be the same with music, that.
No taste.
It will sound like nothing.
Here's the reason why I don't worry. Because of this onslaught, the value of live performers that are freaking awesome, that's going to be the most valuable type of performer. People that really are up there rinsing out, improving brains, rapid firing like and connecting hearts. That's going to be the most valuable people that are like octopuses. Play like there's going to be more princes. Like Prince was an anomaly, but there's going to be so many princes that are going to come in the next 5 to 10 years, because as humans, we're going to be like, yeah, that's us right there. That's us. We're not and they're not going to be chasing an algorithm because here's what you're going to. You're not thinking the robot. Think about what's happening when you go to a concert. There's a huge screen. Politicians are reading from freaking teleprompters. A machine's going to read, doesn't have to read from a teleprompter. It already knows. And it knows what everybody said in real time on the internet. Humans don't have that ability to gather and project what else is happening. People are at the concert and they're watching a show like this and we have our fans. Peabody's yo, what's up Peabody? BPP Katie right over there. BP you know, we know our fans in every city we go to, we don't know everybody's commute as they came. An AI artist will AI artist will take advantage of everybody's phone that's there and talk directly to that phone. Send text messages and individualized content. Humans can't do that. So you have to think about the competition of AI artists and what it means for live events, and what our competition is to really rinse out our spirits, our lived experiences, because we can't make those types of connections that it can make digitally but emotionally. Heart neural neural network to neural network on an organic level, it can't with us. It cannot imagine. It cannot dream. It cannot doesn't have true empathy. But damn is it going to be freaking efficient. Damn is it going to be like, it's going to reason because we're not reasonable. It's going to logic because we're illogical. It's going to freaking calculate because, you know, we don't operate with calculations. We are going to be better humans than we ever been. Because up to this point on social media, we are inhumane to one another. We say the wildest stuff just to get attention.
So we're going to be.
Really quickly. I have to interject all those things that you said that we're going to be, I think, is what makes our music so much better. We aren't calculating. We have the empathy. We make mistakes. We have unpredictability in our lives that comes out in our art. And I think that's what makes our music so different and something that AI can never do.
So what advice would you give to to music creators and to to business leaders who are afraid that AI will replace them?
I would say learn about AI, understand it, really gather the information, know what it does, then figure out how to adapt what you do to using that tool. Because personally, I feel like if you're not using AI, you will be at a disadvantage. So adapt to the technology and then make things with it that you've never done before, or that that technology cannot do. Use the technology to your advantage as a creator to create something new and exciting and incredible.
I would, I would encourage everyone to go out and get your personal GPU. Don't rely on the local village AI, build and tune and train your agentic self. I'm teaching a course on that at ASU now, where my students are building their own agents on their own personal GPU. And while you're doing that, let your agent itself be awesome with predictions. But then you, as the human, be unpredictable. We have to be unpredictable because these machines and these companies that own them can predict you. You got to be unpredictable. You got to, like, live out loud at your highest vibration while you have something that you own that's yours, that leverages your data, that your agent itself.
I like that stay unpredictable. I'm just going to, I think, should we open open this up to questions? I think we've got time for just a couple of questions to each of them. Yeah. So the lady in the red scarf here just say who you are and direct your question.
Hi, my name is Brenda. This question is for Harvey. First of all, I really appreciate I do think there's something I want to, something different about knowing that there was a human being behind it who has shared lived experience. How do you see the Grammys playing out? Are you going to have different categories or what are there going to be different rules for how we we honor artists?
Yes, it's a great question, and it's something that we pay attention to every year as this technology is moving so quickly. We review our rules every year. So right now AI does not disqualify an entrant. You can enter an AI work of art. There has to be human component to it. So we will award a Grammy to a singer that's a human that has like flesh and bones. That singer can win a Grammy if it's singing an AI created composition. Conversely, if, AI artists performs a song that is written by a human will award a Grammy to the songwriting component of that entry. So we're going to do it this way this year. Our awards are February 1st, so they're coming up pretty quick. There's already some AI entrants that are going to come into play, I'm quite sure. And then next year we'll look at it again. And as things change and you start seeing new evolution of the technology will evolve and keep up with it, I hope.
Time for one last quick question. If you ask it quickly, this lady here, and it's going to be a quick answer.
Hello. I'm Natalie, I'm a global shaper from Santiago, Chile, and I'm actually in biotech. So I advocate for Stem education, and I'm trying to do the transition into Stem. So from my experience, it's just been getting to know that some bacteria can be modified to produce different colors. And you can do like, drawings and things like that. But I wanted to know how it can connect to music because I really enjoy it and how new generations can evolve to that. And you mentioned, you know, now we can understand on a molecular and cellular level some sounds and what can be more authentic music than that.
Okay, we've got 10s each go. We'll do it.
What was the.
Question in 10s? How how is music going to match DNA? How are you going to. Make the most of it through AI while you're thinking.
I would.
We're out of time.
Prompt your life. What do I mean by that? You need to hang out with somebody. That's that that those. Synthetic synthetic biology. You need a musician in your life. You need, a full stack developer in your life. And that configuration with the idea to create a system that understands you on a molecular level and a cellular level to create music around that, it's going to come by prompting your life with people to materialize that vision.
And we're going to have to leave it there. But maybe you can have a chat about that afterwards. Thank you to our audience, and thank you to our brilliant panelists, Harvey Mason junior and will.i.am.