Nick Cave has dissected a song produced by the viral chatbot software ChatGPT “written in the style of Nick Cave”, calling it “bullshit” and “a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human”.

Writing in his newsletter the Red Hand Files on Monday, Cave responded to a fan called Mark in New Zealand, who had sent him a song written by ChatGPT. The artificial intelligence, which can be directed to impersonate the style of specific individuals, was used by Mark to create a song “in the style of Nick Cave”.