Ed Newton-Rex is one of the world’s leading experts and speakers on Generative AI. He is one of only a handful of people to have founded and sold a Generative AI company, and has a breadth of experience working at a senior level for social media giants TikTok and Snapchat.
Most recently Ed was the VP of Audio at the billion-dollar Generative AI company Stability AI, but resigned over his concerns about the use of copyrighted material without permission.
Having graduated top of his year in Music at Cambridge University, in 2010 Ed founded Jukedeck, the world’s first AI music company. Jukedeck’s technology was used to create more than a million original pieces of music, and won a number of awards, including a Cannes Innovation Lion. In 2019, the company was acquired by ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company.
At ByteDance, Ed first led the AI music lab, then ran Product in Europe for TikTok, working on the world-renowned AI recommendation algorithm.
At Snapchat, Ed was Chief Product Officer for Voisey, a music creation app that made it easy to make and collaborate on music, which led to record deals for a number of its users.
Most recently, Ed was VP of Audio at Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion, the hugely successful, open-source image generation technology that helped kickstart the mass adoption of Generative AI. He led the team that built and launched Stable Audio, a state-of-the-art AI music generation product that was named one of TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2023.
Ed is also a professional composer, published by Boosey & Hawkes, which gives him a unique perspective on the impact AI will have - and is already having - on the creative industries. He was a co-organiser and judge of the first international AI Song Contest, and is a mentor on the startup programme at Abbey Road Studios in London.
Ed was named one of Business Insider’s 30 most creative people in UK tech, and one of Sifted’s 20 generative AI ‘power players’ in Europe. He has made a number of media appearances discussing AI and creativity, including on the BBC, and has spoken on the topic at a range of conferences including TEDx, Mobile World Congress and Slush.