The creativity of AI (artificial intelligence) is constantly in doubt, but the truth is that there are algorithms capable of creating.
Aiva is the first artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to have been recognized by the French society of musical authors with composer status. SACEM, which manages the copyright of authors and composers of music in France and Luxembourg, has established that all works created by this software will be under the intellectual property of its name. Aiva creates classical music compositions, inspired by the work of the greats, such as Mozart or Beethoven.
Startup Aiva Technologies has created an algorithm capable of composing classical music. And it does so through the information that has been introduced to it about the music of great artists. The software processes all this content and distinguishes patterns and then creates its own melodies.
Aiva’s compositions have been used for to movie soundtracks, in commercials and even for video games. The company, founded between London and Luxembourg a year ago, has based its product on deep learning. The algorithm learns based on this technique based on neural networks, as well as reinforcement learning.
The software decides what action to take at any given time to achieve certain goals. As he acquires them, he is rewarded, which increasingly enables him to sharpen his mind. Aiva is prepared to understand the art of musical composition, for which “has read” the scores of Bach, Beethoven or Mozart.
After all, the relationship between copying and creating it is not always as marked as the semantics of the two words define. In the schools of painting you copy the big ones in order to try to imitate that great stroke. While many famous writers acknowledge having learned by copying entire books from their favorite authors. When these people created new works, the residue left by these copies was called ‘influences’.
This is precisely the way a machine would have to create new works. Introducing large amounts of information (studying) and processing it (assimilating knowledge) is something that can be done today. From there is when algorithms that know how to take advantage of all that baggage will come into play. Its mission is to apply techniques apprehended through information, using as raw material all these data.
“Good artists copy, great artists steal,” Picasso said the phrase (although Steve Jobs made it famous in a later interview). Not that a pretty phrase spoken by a genius has to lay an axiom, but the quote reflects Picasso’s concept of copying and its relationship with art.
Let the philosophical debate continue. In the meantime, Aiva has already released their first album. It’s called Genesis.
Image: HBO
