Nile Rodgers Defends AI Use in New Video for "The Christmas Song"

Nile Rodgers has defended his use of artificial intelligence in a new music video for "The Christmas Song," after fans criticised the approach in Instagram comments.

The song is his 2020 charity collaboration with Rebecca Ferguson. The new video is a fresh version of the track made with AI, the software that generates images and footage from written instructions.

Rodgers pushed back on the criticism in a statement reported by Rolling Stone. "We created everything," he said. "Mood boards, story boards and did it the same way we'd do a film. The AI did what we told it to do and we painstakingly created every second you'll see on the screen."

He also argued that the tool was a practical choice. Rodgers said a traditionally filmed version of the video would have cost about $100,000 in US dollars.

Rodgers went further, pointing to how often people use AI without thinking about it. He said it is "somewhat hypocritical to say you're anti AI and you're using it all the time because it makes your life convenient."

Work on the video is still underway. Rodgers said his team is rushing to have it ready by 20 November, so fans will not have long to see the finished result for themselves.

For listeners, the question is simple: does the method change how the song sounds or what it means? Rodgers's answer is that the team wrote the storyboards, planned the shots and directed the result, with the AI carrying out those instructions. Fans who disagree have already made their views known in the comments, and the video will give them something new to judge.