Dr. Dre Says the Only People Who See AI as a Threat Are Those ‘Who Have Trouble Creating’

Dr. Dre, the legendary hip-hop producer and performer, sees AI as another tool in the music-tech toolbox akin to synthesizers — and asserted that only people “who have trouble creating” are afraid of AI.

Dre, founder of the Aftermath record label and co-founder and CEO of Apple’s Beats, said that he doesn’t see AI “as a threat,” in an interview alongside his longtime business partner Jimmy Iovine, which was published Sunday by the New York Times. “I think the only people that see it as a threat are the people who have trouble creating.”

“I had a discussion with a few people a few days ago,” Dre said. “They were against AI and I’m like, ‘OK, you sound like the person that would have been against the drum machine when it came out.’ Or synthesizers, right? It’s a new tool for creativity. Some people are afraid of learning new things.”

Dre said he’s using AI tech in music “as a tool to see what it would do with what I just did.” Iovine added, “So is Timbaland — another brilliant producer. By the way, there’s a lot of closet AI producers out there.”

Asked what he most recently asked an AI chatbot, Dre said his query was, “How do you put on muscle and lose fat at the same time? That’s it.”

Dre, 61, was named to Forbes’ 2026 Billionaires list, joining the publication’s rankings for the first time, with an estimated net worth of $1 billion. In 2014, he and Iovine sold Beats by Dre to Apple in a deal worth more than $3 billion. Dre in 2023 sold a collection of music income streams and other assets to Shamrock Holdings and Universal Music Group for more than $200 million.