Deadmau5 is no stranger to a beef, having publicly feuded with everyone from Skrillex and Madonna to Kanye West and Paris Hilton.
The latest target in the mouse-headed producer and DJ's crosshairs is an unnamed DJ that allegedly used Deadmau5's AI-generated likeness to promote his music online.
Writing in an Instagram post shared yesterday, Deadmau5 called out the "idiot DJ" – whose name he chooses not to share because he doesn't "care to promote him" – before embarking on a tirade against the dangers of generative AI. Also included in the post is a convincingly authentic image of Deadmau5 that was presumably lifted from the AI-generated video.
"Woke up to some idiot DJ's Instagram story," the post reads, "that depicted me standing there promoting him and his music. Fully AI-generated, voice wasn't quite 100% but pretty damn convincing. Fucking scary as fuck. And I'm sure this is just the beginning for talentless fucks to abuse this tech to further themselves while violating others rights in one of the worst ways possible."
"I'm sure we're all going to be seeing much more of this. AI is fucking great, generative AI not so much; but we need to stop idiots like this from abusing it."
Following up in a post shared to the official Deadmau5 subreddit, the producer made clear to his fans that he would never produce videos about other people's music or releases. "Which isn't to say I don't promote or praise artists, of course I do," the post reads. "Just know that I do it in an authentic way during a stream or interview piece etc. Not some slimy video clip where I'm where I'm exclusively promoting some other work. Use good judgement."
"Be a little vigilant out there," he continues. "The online world has entered a new era of dark shit and you just need to be a little more cautious than not when it comes to things like that."
This isn't the first time Deadmau5 has shared strong opinions on generative AI. In a 2023 interview with MusicTech, he said: "It's pretty scary, but it's scary in the sense of how stupid music already is anyway, so it's not that frightening."
"Like, ‘This thing can make a pop song!’ Have you heard a pop song? Great. Let it go. Unleash the beast, you know - holy shit would that ever open up the niche market for actual musicianship."
Outside of the music world, AI-generated deepfakes have been causing widespread controversy. A recent report from the AI Incident Database described an increasing level of deepfake-enabled fraud occurring on an "industrial" scale, while pointing to the proliferation of non-consensual sexual imagery generated by platforms such as Grok, the AI platform owned by Elon Musk.
