Songwriter Karen Poole uses AI to hear her demos in a male voice, and UMPG UK's David Gray wants only 'fair and ethical' tech

Karen Poole has written for Kylie Minogue, Janet Jackson and Zara Larsson. When she writes for a male singer, she sometimes runs her own vocal through AI so she can hear the song in a man’s voice.

She said it on stage at the Music Ally Publishing Summit 2026 in London on October 12. It was the opening keynote, with David Gray, MD of Universal Music Publishing Group UK, next to her and journalist Mark Sutherland moderating, Music Ally reported.

Gray’s line on AI was short: UMPG backs tech that helps songwriters, if it’s “fair and ethical”.

How Karen Poole uses AI when she writes for male singers

Poole is writing a musical right now. When a song is for a male singer, she changes her voice to a man’s voice on the demo to hear how it sits.

“I just want to hear how I sound as a guy!” she said. She was clear the AI version isn’t going to be released.

This is called voice conversion. The melody, the timing and the words stay exactly as she sang them, and only the colour of the voice changes.

Poole didn’t say which tool she uses. Voice conversion is what tools like Kits AI do.

Poole isn’t the only one doing this. In September, Luke Bryan described writers putting an AI clone of his voice on demos they pitched to him, so he could hear himself on the song before recording it.

For Poole it’s a writing aid, and she said AI will never stop her writing songs. “There’s something very human for me in songwriting,” she said.

If you want the basics first, here is what an AI voice is.

David Gray of UMPG UK backs AI tools only if they’re fair and ethical

Gray agreed that songwriting stays a human job. He pointed to “the chemistry in the room, how you’re feeling, what’s going on in culture and where you are in your career.”

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On the technology side, if it's fair and ethical technology, anything that can help songwriters from that standpoint, we're into. But it has to be fair and ethical… But when you have a hit that is created by human beings, nothing beats that.

Gray didn’t define “fair and ethical” on stage, at least not in Music Ally’s report. The boss of UMPG’s parent company drew a line 4 days earlier, when Universal Music Group chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge said Suno had “trained on everybody’s music and showed complete disregard”.

Earlier in the keynote, Gray talked about building writing rooms. He said the calculated sessions get results, “as opposed to just trying to do volume.”

Poole hopes the AI debate pushes people back towards “more analogue performance and connectivity and living in the moment.” And she closed the session with chess:

“It’s like the chess analogy of the computer being better than any human player could ever be. But everybody still plays chess!”