Google's 'Project Magenta' Art Machine Composes Its First Song (thenextweb.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Google's Project Magenta, which aims to use machine learning to create music and art, just created its first song. The song, which can be more appropriately described as a 90-second melody, is quite simplistic and reminiscent of an old Nokia ringtone. It's impressive for a machine! Magenta is built on top of its TensorFlow system, and all the open-sourced materials one could ever need are available through its Github. The team wants to be able to tell stories from the art it creates similar to that of artists. "The design of models that learn to construct long narrative arcs is important not only for music and art generation, but also areas like language modeling, where it remains a challenge to carry meaning even across a long paragraph, much less whole stories," the team wrote. "Attention models like the Show, Attend and Tell point to one promising direction, but this remains a very challenging task."

Comments

I wonder

[johnsmithperson123]

If we could use deep learning to let computers learn styles and patterns, eventually incorporating them into new music. It could usher in a new era where every film is composed by John Williams, or Mahler's tenth is finished, or there's a new Bach and Beethoven being made every day. Of course, on the arguably darker side, pop music could become entirely computer designed, although considering the quality it would actually sound better if done by computer.

Re:I wonder

[kheldan]

Remember, artificial intelligence works like normal intelligence but only in fantasy and science fiction novels, we don't have real 'AI' in the real world.

Fixed that for you.

We don't even really have a clue how our own brains work yet, let alone being able to even begin to emulate it with a machine. All we have right now are cheesy imitations that fall way, way short of the mark.

Don't anyone sit there and try to convince me that some cheesy algorithm is going to totally emulate human master composers because that's total and complete bullshit. Until we have fully human-level artificial intelligence, completely self-aware, with a full complement of human-level emotion and imagination, there won't be any machine-generated art of music that is equivalent to new works by human artists or human composers. Period.

First song?

[PCM2]

Is it its first attempt, or only the first attempt that can reasonably be classified as a tune?

this is trash

[phantomfive]

It's a crappy melody on top of a repetitious beat. Open the article and listen to it. Compared to the algorithmic music we've had in the past, this is a regression. I knew an undergrad in the 90s who was making computer generated motets better than this.

And that's not even addressing the emotional aspects that are communicated through music. Totally banal (seriously, ,if you disagree with me, at least listen to the 'song' before explaining why you disagree).