China News Client, Beijing, July 12th (Reporter Song Yusheng) "I think I can change the world and share a more beautiful home with you."
At the opening ceremony of the 2020 World Artificial Intelligence Conference a few days ago, a number of artificial intelligence jointly sang a theme song called "Smart Home". However, what many people may not notice is that even the composition of this theme song is artificial intelligence.
In June of this year, the "Composer" artificial intelligence "Xiao Bing" of "Intelligence Home" was just awarded the title of "Honorary Graduate" by the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 2020.
Screenshot of Xiaobing Weibo
Write the complete song in two minutes
"This is my first piece of music after graduating from graduation." On July 9th, Xiao Bing released the MV of "Smart Home" on Weibo, and also wrote such a sentence.
This year, after accepting the "guidance" from the two teachers of the Music Engineering Department of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Xiaobing successfully "graduated" and became an "honorary graduate" of the Music Engineering Department of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.
Chen Shizhe, a teacher of the Music Engineering Department of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music who participated in the "guidance", told China News that the melody of this "Smart Home" was completed by Xiao Bing independently. Has been perfected. "Although humans are involved, it can be said that the main work is done by artificial intelligence."
But how does artificial intelligence compose music? On what basis did Xiaobing "create" the melody of "Smart Home"?
Xiaobing team introduced, "Xiaobing was inspired by the theme of the 2020 World Artificial Intelligence Conference and related materials, and created the melody of this song."
In fact, when inspired by a text description or a picture, now Xiaobing can not only create music tracks, but also automatically complete the orchestration selection, arrangement and lyrics creation according to its style and rhythm.
At present, the time for Xiaobing to create a complete song of about three minutes can be controlled within two minutes.
Shanghai Conservatory of Music awarded Xiao Bing a certificate. Photo courtesy of the Xiaobing team
Are "honorary graduates" stronger than humans?
In addition to the speed of "writing", how is Xiaobing different from human beings in "song writing"?
According to Yu Yang, the mentor of Xiao Bing and the head of the Music Engineering Department of Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Xiao Bing is very different from human beings only in terms of creative methods. "Xiao Bing gets the lyrics and can automatically generate the melody of the music, and you can play it in different ways."
Li Di, the general manager of the Xiaobing team, introduced that specifically, when Xiaobing "creates" music works, he will start with a certain paragraph according to the information given, and then extend from this paragraph to other parts.
Chen Shizhe explained, "We generally think that music is a purely artistic thing, but it can be divided into two parts: music has both art and emotion, and certain rules, especially in melody creation and arrangement, such as comparison. The common chord arrangement structure will have certain rules in it."
At present, Xiaobing is "creating" for the "rules to follow" part of music creation.
This means that artificial intelligence can "create" musical works based on data without imitating human "thinking".
From this point of view, there is no doubt that artificial intelligence currently has a gap with humans.
Yu Yang admits that although AI's ability to create songs and present works does reach a certain level, "AI composers still have a long way to go."
But at the same time, he also believes that the combination of music and technology is complementary and the integration of music and artificial intelligence discipline is the general trend. The development of artificial intelligence to such a high level today will surely produce new fields, new directions, and even new disciplines. The Department of Music Engineering will also focus on training cross-disciplinary music technology talents. "Everyone's artistic creation is unique, and the creation of artificial intelligence can also provide continuous inspiration for human musicians."
MV screenshot of "Smart Home"
What else can humans do?
Although it is impossible for artificial intelligence to completely replace humans in songwriting at present, the Xiaobing team has always emphasized that "the creative power of artificial intelligence has never been aimed at defeating humans", but many people still have such a question: in With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, where will human value be reflected?
The answer given by Chen Shizhe is "emotion" and "innovation". "In the future of music creation, the value of human beings is more in terms of emotion, or a more innovative field that artificial intelligence has not thought about."
"The development of machine technology will force people to explore into more unknown areas. At least it looks like this. This process is also a very interesting thing. Machines will often not play cards according to common sense, write some melody, write Some things have an inspiration to people. So I think the future may be a scenario in which humans and artificial intelligence develop together."
On the other hand, Chen Shizhe also believes that at this stage, artificial intelligence is indeed a technology that can "lower the threshold".
This year, Chen Shizhe and Zhu Ruyi, teachers of the Music Engineering Department of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, completed four online teaching sessions. Together with artificial intelligence Xiaobing, they taught students in Songyang, Zhejiang how to write songs.
"We teach the local children some basic melody creation concepts remotely through a few lessons, then the children can simply write a few melody and lyrics. But this work is not complete, then Xiao Bing's ability to arrange music is shown Now, Xiao Bing can quickly help children perfect their works into a song." Chen Shizhe feels that from this level, artificial intelligence has played a role in improving efficiency and lowering the threshold of art communication.
But he also knows that even in the music field, people have different views on artificial intelligence. "Some people will have resistance, others will take the initiative to embrace, and some people will over-exaggerate the process and role of artificial intelligence. I think we should first greet it and learn it actively, but don’t blindly promote it as a gimmick, and It is really put into practice." (End)