Artificial intelligence can imitate the works of Bach so well that you (probably) can’t tell the difference. Don’t believe me? Try it for yourself.
Can you tell the difference between Bach and RoboBach?
Artificial intelligence has become very good at imitating human composers
Artificial intelligence has become very good at imitating human composers
The computer-generated music in these samples is the work of DeepBach — a deep learning-powered program created by Gaetan Hadjeres and François Pachet of the Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Paris. This is the institution that previously gave us the “world’s first” AI pop song (though that had quite a bit of help from humans) and has used its AI music software FlowMachines to mimic musicians ranging from Mozart to the Beatles.
Now, though, FlowMachines has conquered Bach — and its success says a lot about the current capabilities (and limitations) of current AI.
Deep learning, the method used by FlowMachines and tech companies like Google and Apple, relies on sifting through large amounts of structured data to identify (and later synthesize) patterns. When it comes to applying these methods to music, Bach is a perfect fit. Not only was he incredibly prolific, but his music is consistently structured, following various patterns and formal intricacies that defined Baroque music.
For DeepBach, Hadjeres and Pachet concentrated on Bach’s chorales — pieces of music that set traditional hymns to stately, four-part vocal melodies. Bach wrote 389 chorales in his lifetime, giving DeepBach plenty of material to study, and each chorale has recurring patterns.
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“The human spectators are jiggling happily in their seats, and the musicians are undeniably flesh-and-blood... but the music itself is the product of electronic brains.”
However, it’s not clear to what extent the melodies in the test linked to at the top of the page are solely the work of AI. One of the key feature of DeepBach is that it can, in AI parlance, be “constrained.” That is, its operators can direct the music it produces by imposing certain melodies, bass lines, rhythms, and cadences. Similarly, the music that DeepBach creates is limited to only a single key and time signature, accommodations made to make analysis of the source material simpler.
But even accounting for these limitations, DeepBach is a serious tool; and, perhaps, an early footnote in our journey towards true AI creativity.
- VIA: THE OVERSPILL
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