The AI Composer
2 min
When AI completes Beethoven's unfinished symphony and moves audiences to tears, who is the composer?
In 2021, an AI system completed Beethoven's unfinished 10th Symphony, and it was performed by a full orchestra in Bonn, Germany. Audience members reported being moved to tears, many could not distinguish which sections were Beethoven's original sketches and which were AI-generated completions. Music AI has advanced rapidly since then. Suno and Udio generate full songs with vocals in seconds. AIVA (Artificial Intelligence Virtual Artist) composes orchestral music used in films and video games. Google's MusicLM generates music from text descriptions. Artists like Holly Herndon and Grimes have embraced AI as a collaborator, creating hybrid works that blend human creativity with machine generation. The music industry is grappling with fundamental questions: when an AI generates a melody by learning from millions of songs, who is the composer? The answers are reshaping creative industries.
A symphony composed by AI that moved an audience to tears.