How Brian Eno Used AI to Make Music Like His Own

Brian Eno revealed what happened when he tried to use AI to generate music in his own style.

He discussed the status of machine learning while talking about his upcoming book, What Art Does, co-written with Bette Adriaanse, which explores the nature of creativity. But the tech pioneer warned of a “chasm of mediocrity” between work created by algorithms those invented by human artists.

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The Guardian reported that the pair had used a song generator to deliver “half-decent ‘Brian Eno’ material.” Eno said. “It wasn’t too bad, but none of it was so good that I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to release this.’”

He added: “Somebody said to me the other day, ‘I’ll be interested in AI when some product of AI makes me cry’, and I thought that was a very good test. I think it’s not possible unless you assume intentionality on the part of something being made.”

Reflecting that he’d made a lot of his own music in similar ways, he continued: “I’ve been close to being an AI artist for quite a long time, by inventing and setting up systems that make music.

“But although I’m not present and controlling the moment of the performance, I have, first of all, had the idea to do them. Secondly, I built the apparatus by which they are made. And that involves a lot of decisions, of trying out and thinking, ‘That doesn’t work,’ and ‘I’ll change the rules a bit,’ and so on and so on.”

Brian Eno Says AI Is Set Up for Mediocrity

His point, he said The Guardian, was that human instinct and judgment were essential in art.

“The first thing you have to do is stop it going down into the chasm of mediocrity that it will always want to go into, because that’s the way it’s set up,” he said. “If you think about it, even though it all sounds very, very complicated, it’s essentially a system for deciding what the next word is. I’m not trying to say I’m not fascinated by it. I am.

“But in my experience, the times it works are when people are very careful about what goes in and very critical about what comes out.”

What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory will be published on Jan. 15 via Faber & Faber.