Here’s what an AI-composed Joe Bonamassa song sounds like
Pretty convincing for a computer programme.
Image: Mickey Bernal / Getty
Blues rocker Joe Bonamassa is the latest artist to be mimicked by Jukebox, OpenAI’s music composition tool powered by artificial intelligence.
Entitled March: In the style of Joe Bonamassa, the minute-long clip features familiar vocals and instrumentals in the style of Bonamassa’s tracks.
AI research company OpenAI introduced the programme in 2020, the technology featuring a neural network that is able to generate music as raw audio in a variety of styles.
Bonamassa isn’t the only artist to be imitated by the platform, as other attempts at mimicking the stars have been heard on OpenAI Soundcloud’s account. These include the likes of Simon and Garfunkel, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Celine Dion.
As the latest AI composer created by the company, Jukebox is thought to surpass music generated from MIDI samples in MuseNet, a software also developed by OpenAI.
Jukebox, in comparison, was trained on 1.2 million songs during its development to provide the system with information such as audio, lyrics and metadata, including the names of artists, genre and year of release.
This allows it to more accurately mimic a wide range of styles when provided with lyrics generated from an AI language model. The programme then completes songs in a specific genre and in the style of the artist, with results ranging from pretty precise to, not quite there yet, as heard in the clip of the Bonamassa-inspired track. Still, it’s an interesting thought that the next blues hit might one day be created by computers.