AIVA: The Artificial Intelligence Composer

The keynote for last years Nvidia GTC conference made headlines around the world for its video featuring of how omnipresent artificial intelligence might be in the future. Playing behind the video was a soundtrack also composed by an AI, AIVA, a small company from Luxembourg.

The team behind AIVA are from a classical music background and trained it on music from composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach to give it an understanding of musical theory, and the patterns behind it. AIVA is purely a composer, providing the music to play, but not actively performing it. So far, this has meant that international orchestras have played its pieces as well as other computer software, such as music for a computer game. The generative music aspect is the most interesting promise of AIVA to me (and I speak as a former musician), where an AI is a perfect candidate for creating music that a human has no desire or capacity to make. For example, 400 hours of in-game music that reacts to all permutations of gameplay, or musak for a shopping mall that responds to the time of day and other environmental conditions.

As with all the best (and most ethical) AIs, AIVA aims to help and supplement human musicians, not replace them. How many times have the musicians reading this article picked up an instrument to be hit by writer’s block? Maybe AIVA (or something like AIVA) could help get your creative flow started with suggestions on a theme or mood, and then you continue from there. In this case, should you list AIVA as a co-songwriter? AIVA has already released one album that has thousands of plays, so maybe it’s already more famous than you. You better get writing.

In the meantime, here's my interview with Pierre Barreau, CEO of Aiva.