•Australian composer Mick Gordon, renowned for his experimental approach to video game music, has firmly rejected the use of generative AI in his creative work. Speaking with IGN at PAX Australia 2026, Gordon did not mince words when asked whether he had considered incorporating such technology into his process.
“F##k AI,” said Gordon during the interview.
Gordon has built a reputation for unconventional sound design. For 2013’s Killer Instinct, he used a kangling—a Tibetan instrument traditionally carved from human femur or tibia—to construct the theme for the skeletal Spinal character out of actual bones. His work on 2016’s Doom famously sampled real chainsaw noises to create distinctive guitar riffs that elevated the game’s soundtrack into what many regard as a heavy metal masterpiece.
When pressed on whether he would ever use generative AI, Gordon made his position clear: he will do anything to create a great soundtrack, but not that.
“Generative AI is always going to be behind where humans are because it’s going to be inherently trained off stuff that humans have already created,” explained Gordon. “It creates a large database of what [it’s] been trained on, and then it draws a very logical conclusion on whatever that dataset is. It’s always going to be limited by its dataset, though. It’s never going to be in a state where it’s going to predict the next thing, the new thing, whatever humans can come up with. It’s always going to be behind just by the nature of the way that these things work.”
Gordon expressed optimism that audiences will continue to favor human-created music over machine-generated content.
“Humans are always going to want to interact with other humans. Always,” said Gordon. “And I feel this AI stuff is just giving people more reason to abandon this digital infection that we have with our lives now.” He added, “I feel that humans are always going to chase that human connection.”
Gordon can next be heard in Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 when it releases on October 14. He contributed the score for the first-person shooter’s final boss fight, a clip of which appears in the game’s trailer.
He is also working on the soundtrack for Defect, a cyberpunk-themed squad-shooter being developed by veterans of the Doom and Call of Duty franchises. In both projects, Gordon insisted his music comes from his own mind and fingers rather than any AI tool.
Fans in the UK will be able to see Gordon perform live when he takes the stage as the headline act at 2027’s RADAR festival, where he is set to perform music from his Doom and Doom Eternal soundtracks with a full band for the first time.
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