Application of AI in the fields of Music, Poetry, Arts, and Publishing.

Artificial intelligence is the ability of a machine to display human-like abilities like reasoning, planning, and creativity. The computer receives data, processes it and responds.AI systems are capable of adapting their behavior to a certain extent by analyzing the effects of previous actions and working on them. It is now seen as central to the digital transformation of society. AI is already involved in many fields in our lives and future developments will bring further changes. We will discuss the role of AI in four fields:

AI in Music Industry

Many music software programs have been developed that use AI to produce music. A common feature is the capability of the AI algorithm to learn based on the information obtained such as the computer accompaniment technology, which is based on listening to a human performer so it can perform in synchrony.

Then there is the interactive composition technology where a computer composes music in response to the performance of a live musician. The algorithm learns what characteristics and patterns create enjoyable music. The AI model can compose new musical numbers by combining elements in unique ways.

AI automates services and discovers patterns and insights in large data sets and ultimately helps in creating efficiencies. Companies that prepare for how AI will transform the music business will not be left behind. The various AI applications cover music composition, production, and the way it is marketed and consumed.

Tech companies are investing in a future where AI assists musicians in creating music. Google’s Magenta project has produced songs written and performed by AI and Sony has developed Flow machines, an AI system that has released a song created by AI.

The computer music project at Carnegie Mellon University develops computer music and interactive performance technology to enhance human musical experience and creativity. This draws on cognitive science, artificial intelligence, music theory, machine learning, multimedia, and human-computer interaction.

AIVA is a program created in 2016 in Luxembourg and it produces soundtracks for any type of media. The algorithms of AIVA are based on deep learning architectures.

Musicians and professionals will now have to master tech skills that help them leverage the power of AI tools to perform their jobs better. AI services like Juke deck help musicians develop their own music with the help of AI.

20,000 new tracks are uploaded to Spotify daily and AI helps to sort through the options and recommend them to the listeners based on their listening habits.AI and big data can make the music genre obsolete because AI-generated playlists are made not based on the genre but based on what is considered good music.

AI is helping in the discovery of new artists. As we know it is expensive to get a new artist get discovered and talent can remain hidden for a long time. With the deluge of streaming music, it has become even more difficult to find artists that haven’t signed to a label.AI is helping the music industry with artist and repertoire discovery.

Warner music group and Apple have acquired startups that specialize in music analytics to find promising talent. AI can help in discovering which fans would enjoy an artist’s music. It helps fans sort out through streams of music to find music that appeals to them.

AI in Poetry

With the help of Machine learning, the latest AI technology, computers can compose poems but this requires a lot of data input. The deep neural networks; the most sophisticated machine learning techniques need a lot of data to train or become more accurate at a given task. The neural network architecture named after our own brain circuitry has proven to be good for this task and deep learning machines certainly need more inputs than an average school kid.

A team of researchers from Microsoft and Kyoto University developed a poet AI to generate poems. The AI was fed with thousands of images paired with human-written descriptions and poems. This taught the algorithm association between images and text. It taught imagery, rhymes to create a poem, and also some colors or images that relate to emotions and metaphors.

Once the AI was trained it was given the task of creating poems and many of the poems generated were quite good. The researchers now wanted to check if an average person could tell if it was machine-written. They asked people to judge online on Amazon Mechanical Turk and the persons were presented with many poems. The people failed many times in judging if it was machine written.

Over the past years, there has been an enormous amount of progress in language-generating AI. OpenAI’s GPT-3, is a language generator and can write convincing essays. Google’s AI tool, Verse by Verse allows users to compose a poem using suggestions from classic American poets. The program uses machine learning algorithms to identify language patterns of a particular poet’s work and applies them to the text it generates.

The AI tool allows users to select from 22 American poets like Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allen Poe. Once the user has selected three poets they pick the type of poem they would like to write. The program offers poetic forms like free verse and quatrain. Users have to give the program the first line and it generates the rest of the poem. The AI makes suggestions line by line making it more interactive.

AI in the field of arts

Artificial intelligence is now being used in the fields like arts. Computer algorithms are taking the roles previously reserved for the human mind.

If we take the case of art, the use of newer technologies has been implemented by artists from times immemorial. They found ways for making clay figurines, paintings, and now advanced 3D paintings. Technology has made the life of artists much easier.

The use of technology has varied uses in the field of art. A humanoid robot named Aida can draw and paint using her artificial eye and a pencil. This is possible due to her mechanical abilities in combination with AI-based algorithms.

In 2019, an Artificial Intelligence artist AICAN’s work was displayed at a New York art gallery. Before AICAN, human artists exerted control over the final work of art, but AICAN(Artificial intelligence creative adversarial network) was created to produce work of art on its own. The work was attributed to the collaboration between machines and humans.

The canvas portrait work done by AICAN was due to the data of 1 Lakh photos of Western art fed to it. It was allowed to learn from these photos and create work without human intervention.

The artwork of AICAN is similar to that of human artists and the people find it difficult to distinguish between the two. At the click of a button, the machine creates an image that can be printed. The machine can even name the work of art it generates.

One difference with the images created by AICAN and humans is that it lacks social context. Humans are inspired by people, surroundings, and stories that connect with the world. The resolution to this can be that curators can take the work by AICAN and assimilate it with our society.

It is a collaboration between humans and machines and provides a push beyond biological boundaries. Our machines are just an extension of our minds to increase our efficiency.

In the past few decades, human free time has increased due to the automation of many things. We find that newer and newer systems and machines are entering our everyday life to assist us.

With the availability of more time, many people would be encouraged to participate in artistic pursuits. Artists and entertainers will be in more demand in the future due to rising incomes which would create more demand for leisure and creativity. This would result in more people working in the creative field

AI in Publishing.

As we have seen above AI has now entered almost every industry. So how can the publishing business be left behind? The publishing industry depends on big hits. But the game of predicting bestsellers is not easy. Even the big publishing houses fail many times and it ultimately comes on the gut instinct and educated guesses.

A computer algorithm called Bestseller-o-meter has been developed by Jodie Archer, ex-research lead on literature at Apple, and Mathew Jockers an associate professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The result of the algorithm is based on the track record of predicting New York Times bestsellers that are applied to the novels for the last 30 years.

The bestseller-o-meter has tried to identify the characteristics of best-selling fiction by working on close to twenty thousand novels. The code of bestseller documents the work they did to train the machine to read and understand at the level of diction and syntax involved in writing a bestselling fiction. Features like repetitions, word usage patterns, and thematic emphases are looked for. There are other elements involved like prose and decorative verbs that connote action-oriented take-charge characters.

With the publishing houses less inclined to divert funds to unknown authors the bestseller-o-meter would be of help. But the only concern is that with this algorithm writers would be inclined to write their books to satisfy the needs of the algorithm. The situation can turn both ways; a good book can get the bestselling title or a bad book that satisfies the algorithm but not the literature.

Our life is impacted by artificial intelligence daily not only in the fields mentioned above but in many other fields too. AI impacts our choices in one way or the other. It is helping humans to become more productive thereby leading a better life. With further advances in technology, AI will get further entwined in our lives resulting in much quicker communications and decision making.