Don’t Look Now, But A.I. Composed Music Is Taking Hold

It’s tough out there for songwriters and composers of every genre. There’s more competition than ever, thanks to better training and the proliferation of home studios, so the last thing that’s needed is another obstacle to go up against. That’s why the rise in A.I. composed music (meaning by artificial intelligence) is so disconcerting. Most of us are used to dealing with human competition, but going up against an evolved computer is another story.

The New York Times had a great article on A.I. composed music not too long ago, and cited numerous examples from different genres. Here are a few of them below.

In the first, composer Lejaren Hiller used a computer to produce the “Illiac Suite” for string quartet, which is said to be the first computer-generated score.

Here’s one by Future that was composed using Sony’s AI tool Flow Composer.

And finally, here’s one in the style of The Beatles, also composed using Flow Composer.

I wasn’t too impressed until I heard the last one, which is quite good in that at least it has a memorable melody.

Somehow though, I don’t think human songwriters and composers have much to worry about – yet. A.I. composed music isn’t going away though, so prepare for a future of trying to decide whether a song was composed by human or machine.