Fender’s CEO compared cover bands to AI. Now he’s walking it back

The CEO of the world’s biggest guitar brand has drawn the ire of musicians after comparing cover bands to chatbots, seemingly dismissing both as fundamentally uncreative. He now wants to set the record straight. Speaking to the website T3 earlier this year, Fender CEO Edward “Bud” Cole argued that cover songs function as a kind of “analog AI,” allowing beginners to play music before they write their songs. He also claimed to see a songwriter’s bandmates serving a similar role t...