Artificial intelligences and art have an increasingly close relationship, thanks to movies, Dantesque nudes, and well-crafted portraits... but what about music? The digital agency Space150 decided to find out, and the result is "Jack Park Canny Dope Man" by TravisBott, an agent trained on the songs and lyrics of artist Travis Scott. Beyond its obsession with food, some are already wondering how long it will take for the music world to surrender to the new generation of artificial performers...
The Rise of Virtual Artists
The idea of a "digital or virtual artist" is hardly new. Anyone who has seen "Macross Plus" surely remembers Sharon Apple, and today we could say Hatsune Miku belongs to a similar category. At the same time, we have virtual models that have taken social media by storm, with millions of followers tracking their every move. However, all those examples still have a human element in the background. The question is: What happens if we remove it?
AI and the Arts
That's where advances in artificial intelligence come in. Some neural networks generate human faces from nothing. Deepfakes are increasingly complex and detailed. They have even painted pictures that were praised by professional critics. What's next on the list? That question brings us to the digital agency Space150, which created an AI trained on the music of Travis Scott, one of the most popular rappers right now (and one I had to Google because I'm old and know nothing about "hot" artists). The agent's name is TravisBott, and here is its first song, "Jack Park Canny Dope Man":
https://vimeo.com/384062745Why Travis Scott?
Now... why Travis Scott? Space150's creative director Ned Lampert explains that it's about "a unique artist with a unique sound" and a certain "aesthetic, both visually and acoustically", two expressions that are perfectly generic if ever there were any. However, the technical aspect is a bit more interesting, as TravisBott was trained on Scott's songs and lyrics for two weeks.
At first, the generator only created songs about food or the act of eating, and although the final version doesn't completely eliminate that tendency, if we ignore the broken English and strange combinations... it doesn't sound terrible, to say the least. The folks at Vulture wonder how many years will pass before we see a "Best AI Artist" category at the Grammys. Now we have the same question.
Source: Vulture
