The project I’ve found is Watson Beat, which is from IBM. IBM is an American multinational information technology company, and it mainly focuses on computer software and hardware. According to IBM’s website, IBM has created Watson, an open platform powered by machine learning. One of its main functions is to let people automate the AI lifecycle. Watson Beat is a version of Watson and it focuses on composing melody.
Watson Beat can create complicated compositions on the basis of the input simple notes. What the user needs to do is to play a simple piece of melody as the input. Then Watson Beat will get the sound and generally analyze it in a short period. After that the user can choose different mood of the melody such as dark, romantic, and amped. Finally Watson will output a track based on what it heard from the users.
Here is an example showing how it works:
And the following videos display the compositions created by Watson Beat.
Watson Beat’s development is based on two methods of machine learning——Reinforcement Learning and Deep Belief Network. Generally reinforcement learning is used to get the best possible path in specific situations and maximize the reward. DBN is an unsupervised probabilistic deep learning algorithm, and it can create a function to achieve users’ goals. The role of reinforcement learning here in Watson Beat is using western music theory to build reward functions. DBN can train on a simple input and then create a complicated track.
Even though Watson Beat can create lots of rich and great melody, its main function is still to inspire composers but not to completely create melody and then replace the composers. When musicians or composers are struggling to build the first idea of a song, they can just randomly play some notes. And then Watson Beat will make the melody richer, which might give them inspiration.
I’ve had a deeper understanding of how artificial intelligence and machine learning indeed benefit people in the creative area, especially of Reinforcement Learning and Deep Belief Network. Artificial intelligence is more like assistant for human in essence, at least in creative field. The full use of artificial intelligence can improve works of art and make them better. Because the analysis of AI is based on the professional theories and large data sets, which makes it more reliable. Human is still in the dominant position to decide what they want artificial intelligence to do to assist them. AI outputs an example or prototype and the artists will make the prototype a complete work. So there’s no need to worry about whether the development of artificial intelligence could replace human in creative activities.
I’d like to quote Elizabeth Transier, IBM THINKLab Director, a sentence as the end of my blog, since I really believe his opinion about how artificial intelligence is benefitting us human. As he says, “Watson Beat is a great example of how IBM cognitive technologies are starting to augment human capabilities and help us reach new capabilities.”
The link of my presentation:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-6eAQqNOhDy0j46je3fcbOvEIIyCvHCV8lTbsZAqhoY/edit#slide=id.p
Reference:
https://medium.com/@anna_seg/the-watson-beat-d7497406a202
https://www.ibm.com/case-studies/ibm-watson-beat
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/what-is-reinforcement-learning/
https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/deep-learning-deep-belief-network-dbn-ab715b5b8afc