Veteran British star Petula Clark hopes artificial intelligence will never be able to replace the warmth and emotion of a real singer.
At 93, the Downtown legend still relishes the connection between audience and performer, and the humanity in delivering a vocal - two things AI songs might eliminate.
"We're all very worried about that, and they're actually saying eventually AI will have emotion, and even that's a little worrying - where do we go from there?" said Clark.
"For the future, it's a little puzzling, to say the least," she told AFP in an interview.
Asked if the human feel in a song was irreplaceable, she said: "We like to think so. Who knows? The way things are going, maybe everything is going to be replaced anyway. I hope not. I find the whole thing a bit scary.
"There's been a lot of electronic stuff, computers in studios for quite a few years, and we're OK, we're still here. But how much longer?"
Clark said her singing register was now lower, but the magic was still present.
"My voice, it has changed," she explained.
"But it hasn't changed in whatever it has: it's there. It's come down a little bit, but I kind of like it!"
"What I do is very personal, and it's mine; nobody can be me," she said.
Clark said there were plans for a concert in a London theatre, possibly later this year.
"It's going to be something very important for me, and very emotional too. It may be my last one; who knows?" she said.
"But I'm really looking forward to it, getting back to an audience. There's nothing quite like the communion with an audience."
Clark met the French publicist Claude Wolff in 1957, they married in 1961, and in a very rare step for a British or US artist, she fully embraced French songs, becoming a major star in France too.
When seeking out new songs, Clark said it was "always the melody" that caught her ear, "because melody is international".
