Keith Richards rejects AI, calls great-grandparenting “true,” and keeps the Stones rolling

Keith Richards is 82, a great-grandfather, and apparently still allergic to the idea of outsourcing creativity to machines. In a video call from the Hit Factory in New York, he confirms he has become a great-granddad, exclaiming “This is true! This is true!” while discussing the Rolling Stones knocking out “another new album.” And then, in the same breath, he pivots to the bigger creative fight he wants to have right now: why he’s rejecting AI in favour of “the old ways.”

Richards paints the family milestone with his usual stream of half-jokes and human messiness. “It’s been a couple of weeks. It’s a new thing for me,” he says. “But I’m a fantastic grandad.” Then comes the moment that makes you lean in, because it is not just a sentimental aside. He describes great-grandadding as a practical exchange: “I try to let them hang with me for as long as humanly possible, then I hand ’em back.” He adds, “I’ve been doing a lot of grandfathering in the last year or so. I’ve got three or four new ones, you know. When I say new, I mean... two or three years old. Or four. Or one, or maybe five.” When that sounds vague, he shrugs and laughs, saying, “I lose track, you know.”

For executives and deal-makers watching the music industry, that “old ways” line is the real policy signal hiding in plain sight. AI is already being pulled into music workflows everywhere, from drafting lyrics and melodies to generating production-ready sound-alikes. Richards’ stance is not a technical critique in the way a software engineer would frame it. It is a cultural and creative preference statement, and statements like that matter because they shape what artists, labels, and platforms choose to normalise. If a living legend positioned as the Stones’ creative center of gravity says he is rejecting AI in favour of human methods, it gives other creators a reference point, and it gives investors a market read: audiences may reward authenticity claims, even when AI tools can lower costs or accelerate output.

There is also an incentive angle buried in his comments. The Rolling Stones have a long track record of releasing and touring at scales that are hard to replace with automation. In industries like music, brand equity is a form of capital. It is not just about songs; it is about the story of how those songs get made. When Richards talks about “the old ways,” he is effectively protecting the provenance of the work. That matters because the industry still lives in questions of authorship and ownership. Who created what, who performed it, and what portion of the final output is truly human can affect licensing, royalty allocation, and how platforms moderate “original” content.

Then there is the regulatory and governance backdrop, even if the Guardian piece does not list specific rules. Across creative tech, governments and regulators are increasingly focused on AI transparency, consent, and the use of copyrighted material. Platforms face growing pressure to label synthetic media and avoid misleading consumers. For labels and rights holders, this is not academic. It turns into operational requirements: tracking training data sources, documenting the chain of creation, and deciding what categories of AI-assisted work can be distributed without triggering disputes.

Richards’ rejection of AI can be read as risk management in that broader sense. Using fewer AI tools, or insisting on traditional methods, simplifies compliance conversations because it reduces the ambiguity around provenance. That does not automatically make content “safe” under every scenario, but it can lower the friction when questions arise. Boards and management teams like clarity. Clear creative processes tend to mean fewer legal edge cases, fewer platform-specific rejections, and less time spent defending how a track was assembled.

And yes, there is a second-order implication that sounds almost too human to be business. When Richards talks about great-grandadding, he is describing a long-term orientation: cycles that repeat, relationships that develop over time, and the idea that you show up, then step back. That mindset maps surprisingly well onto why many legacy artists resist purely automated systems. Music is not only output. It is rehearsal, failure, revision, and the lived constraints of humans in studios. If your creative identity is built on that process, automation that compresses steps can feel like it breaks the spell, even when the end result is technically impressive.

So what should peers in the industry take from this? Richards is not issuing a legal opinion or a policy memo. But his stance from inside a New York studio alongside a Rolling Stones album push is a market signal. When a figure like him rejects AI publicly while remaining active and productive, it suggests that tradition is not a museum piece. It is a competitive advantage in perception, brand trust, and creative legitimacy. For executives making production strategy decisions, the question is not only “Can we use AI?” It is “Will the audience, the rights ecosystem, and the governance reality reward what we ship?” Richards’ answer, delivered with “This is true! This is true!” energy, is that the old ways still win.