“Move over Gaga, here comes Google,” Steven Musil reports for CNET.
“The Web giant on Wednesday unveiled a 90-second piano melody, the first piece of art created by machine learning as part of Project Magenta,” Musil reports. “The project, announced last week at Moogfest, is an artificial intelligence effort to create original music and visual art.”
“The project is built on top of Google’s TensorFlow,” Musil reports, “the artificial-intelligence engine the Web giant uses to add capabilities such as speech and object recognition to its products.”
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, that does generally suck… for now. But, remember, this is music composed without the human hand. The researchers gave the AI four notes to start off and from there the machine composed the actual song itself.
Certainly Google has a long way to go to even approach Emily Howell, a computer program created by David Cope during the 1990s:
Mike Murphy writes for Quartz, “This is no simple task, given that even the most advanced artificially intelligent systems have enough trouble copying the styles of existing artists and musicians, let alone coming up with entirely new ideas themselves.”
MacDailyNews Take: In three years, Alphabet will become the largest supplier of music. All streaming services are upgraded with Alphabet computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards, they chart songs with frightening success. The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes online August 4th, 2027. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug…
Watch out Kraftwerk!
Oh discordia.
Open the iPod chords, HAL.
As a lover of classical music (old and new), I don’t feel the least bit threatened. Pop music on the other hand hasn’t really been buried in talent for a very long time. No problem for me if those folks lose their jobs to a chromebook.
Mozart won’t be out of a job anytime soon, but Bieber….
Pop music is driven by celebrity….so no threat there either
Reminded me of that one microsoft project about music that made me cringe
it’s Microsoft Songsmith
Already done, and (apparently) extremely well: https://psmag.com/triumph-of-the-cyborg-composer-620e5aead47e?gi=1d9627d60482 And yes, it fools even classical musicians!
Yes, I remember Radiolab did a show about Cope’s infamous EMI algorithm/A.I. some years ago. Although it sounded rather weird or unconvincing at times, some sections were astonishingly good. Obviously, the software wouldn’t be able to convincingly finish unfinished masterpieces like Bach’s Kunst der Fuge, Mozart’s Requiem, or something as complex as Scriabin’s Mysterium, but fuck it, I was impressed nonetheless. Apparently, Charlie Parker came up with his signature style because he wanted to make sure that no (white) man would be able to copy him. Maybe, in a distant future, the highest achievement for musicians will be to develop a style that can’t be mimicked by an A.I.
“Maybe, in a distant future, the highest achievement for musicians will be to develop a style that can’t be mimicked by an A.I.”
That actually seems pretty likely, I reckon, even without the word “distant”… but only for “serious” music, the type that most people barely know exists. Pop music has – for several decades already – generally been so formulaic that it’d be easy for A.I. to emulate. (Thinking of the sentiment expressed in Godley and Creme’s 1978 “Hit Factory/Business is Business”, for example.)
After I listened to this, I listened again on a much higher quality system to listen properly, but the piano sample used ( or synthesised ) was dreadful and actually sounded worse on decent speakers. You would have thought that at the very least, they would have demoed their algorithm using good quality sounds. There are any number of built in sounds within a basic install of Garageband that are massively superior to any of those samples. Whatever the merits of the tune and backing created from that simple starting point, it sounded awful, but could easily have sounded a whole lot better.
I would rathe listen to paint dry… Screw Google
I don’t understand why AI researchers try to get AI to create music. Why should Human (like) AI? Why should it like music? If it did, how would we assess it’s quality? Why should we like it or even find it bearable? If aliens landed, would we check their music to determine their intelligence?
If our liking of music is an artefact of the way our brains process sound, AI and perhaps aliens would have an entirely different view of music.
Come to that, if we presented hip hop or some other more recent music to people in the late 1800’s, would they think it the work of an intelligent being?
The whole exercise if futile. If the machines are truly creative, we have no grounds to say whether it’s good or not. If the goal is to see if they can make music WE like, then they can never truly be creative since we have to give them the rules we need followed for our tastes.
Basically, what arrogance is it that allows us to think we can judge the musical tastes of another intellect? Or even judge that an intelligence must appreciate music because we do?
edit * Why should AI be Human (like) AI?
Google shills should be forced to listen to bimbo pap music 24x7x365 until their ears prolapse.
Hahahahahahahhahaha…………..next GoogleWash an AI washing machine that intelligently wash shit stuck in your underware.
Sounds like a hit these days.
Yes, this is what the world needs, removing human beings from art creation. Why would Google or their customers ever want to pay an artist for their craft?
And this project is useful for what??? There are already plenty of people with no musical talent composing crappy songs every day. No AIs need apply.
Kids, fake “AI” music generators have been around for decades, and they all sucked as much as Google’s. There is nothing new here. There is no intelligence here, artificial or otherwise. IOW: I’m pointing at the programmers of this crap and saying THEY are not intelligent.
Another Google novelty of no consequence.
I don’t feel like they’ve even tried yet. From a musical standpoint this is a joke. Someone could take this really far though.