The Australian team named Uncanny Valley has won the AI Song Contest with a track entitled Beautiful the World. The event was organized by Dutch broadcaster VPRO in cooperation with radio station NPO 3FM and NPO Innovation.

Beautiful the World is largely written using artificial intelligence. The team trained their machine with audio samples of koalas, kookaburras and Tasmanian devils, giving the song a unique Australian twist. It also carries a positive social message: after the huge forest fires that ravaged the country over  the past year and cost many animals their lives, nature has the ability to recover.

The winner is determined by adding up the points awarded online by the international audience and a panel of AI experts. The audience chose Beautiful the World. The panel, consisting of AI experts Vincent Koops (from the Netherlands), Anna Huang (US) and Ed Newton-Rex (UK), also rated this song highly, but gave the German team Dadabots x Portrait XO the full douze points.

The audience’s enthusiasm for the Australian entry is a big boost for AI as a creative technique for the future. It shows that a computer can write a feel-good song with a catchy hook.

The panel were very impressed by the competition entries:

'We were amazed by the teams’ wide range of innovative approaches to using artificial intelligence in creating songs. Each one felt very personal in different ways, and this reflects how each team’s artistic vision drove their collaboration with AI. Composing a song with AI is hard because you have all the creative challenges that come with songwriting, but you also have to juggle with getting the machine learning right. Overall, we were delighted by the diversity and collaboration within the teams. They not only pushed the boundaries of their personal creativity, but also gave the audience a look into the exciting future of human-AI musical collaboration'

Read the panel’s statement here.

Initiator Karen van Dijk:

'With their entries, the thirteen participating teams have made the most out of the creative possibilities of artificial intelligence. With great results. In my opinion, some songs would not be out of place in the official Eurovision Song Contest.'

© VPRO