AI has made it’s presence in all our doorsteps, now to make it even more spicier, it has been a part of Google Doodle today!
Yes, Google has employed AI driven doodle celebrating the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach is one of the most persuasive composers of the history. He is known for his instrumental compositions such as, The Art of Fugue, the Brandenburg concertos and the Goldberg variations.
Today’s doodle is a must try, and it is not only for music enthusiasts or the lovers of baroque harmonies! The tech mogul’s homage to the re-owned composer reveals actually way more than just giving you some fun minutes during lunch breaks.
Well, when you give it a click, we can play some notes using our mouse on a simplified organ like keyboard.What happens next is that the AI joins in and crated a two measure melody in the style of the German composer.
The doodle was made in partnership with the Google Magneta and the Google PAIR teams. The core of the fun is a machine learning algorithm. Well, though most of us know what is machine learning , let’s see a brief definition about it. Machine learning is the way computer scientists build the intelligence of an AI. In spite of the traditional method, in which a computer is programmed to follow a strict set of rules. In ML ,it is given a vast amount of data to process in order to come up with its own ideas.
COCONET:
Google’s Magneta Team’s AI resident Anna Huang developed coconet, which is a flexible machine learning model.Huang fed it with 306 of Bach’s choral harmonies. the strict structure of the chorales served as an excellent learning material. Coconet is indeed a small program and it can harmonize as well as compose music from scratch.
Although, since those processors require a massive back-up on the hardware side,there wouldn’t be enough for us doodle today.This is where google’s PAIR team joined the endeavor.Their job is to optimize Coconet’s requirements so that the ML model can run on our browsers real time.
They have employed TensorFlow.js, a library which makes complex computing processes faster by combining existing Javascript models. In addition to that, Google introduces another novelty, Tensor Processing Units(TNU’s) here in case our system is not so powerful enough to do all the calculations necessary.
AI vs HUMAN MUSIC:
John Loeffler, says that we are standing in the door of a new era in music production in which AI will have a very important,if not leading,role.Within, a couple of years the development of musical AI programs will storm us with the growth if evolution of mobile photography caused recently.
It is true that we are moving on in a new era but is this a boon of modernity and creativity or a bane of unpredictable nuances coming in the name of technology. Whatsoever it may be, until we are fed with the AI musical programs let’s enjoy human-created music. Let’s start it with the Birthday boy Bach!
