‘AI-generated music is awesome, somebody’s still generating it. When the machine’s doing it on its own, talk to me’ — will.i.am tells me how he tunes LG’s new speakers, and why TikTok rather than AI is the big danger to music

At CES 2026, LG announced a new wave of speakers in its xboom range, once again produced in collaboration with will.i.am. Last year's models produced some real hits – we gave the xboom Stage 301 and the xboom Grab glowing reviews, so I was looking forward to seeing the new range.

LG has talked a lot about how the sound profile was really tuned and decided with will.i.I am, and I got to talk to him at the show about what that really means – what kind of technical involvement he had with the speakers, and how he approaches sound tuning.

But it's not just will.i.am's music background that interests me – he's been a huge technology guy for over a decade. He was one of the key influences and investors in the original launch of ...