Remember your favorite songs that comes on the radio? Remember all the feelings and emotions the songs evoked in you?
It’s accepted that it takes a good song writer/artist to produce songs that move us human beings.
That’s why computers have a hard time writing and generating songs that have a genuine feel and emotional draw in them.
However, researchers at Osaka University together and Tokyo Metropolitan University have developed a device that can detect your brain waves, and then produce new songs to elicit new feelings in you.
In the study, users listened to music while wearing wireless headphones that contained brain wave sensors. The sensors read the listener’s brain waves. The machine then analyzed the brain waves to make the music.
The researchers found that users were more engaged with the music when the system could detect their brain patterns.
Does this means that robots will be writing hit songs we hear on the radio from now on? Probably not, since machines don’t really have a soul. Isn’t that what make great music — the “soul” in the music?
However, there are applications for this kind of device.
These machines can be developed to help read human emotions, and then reinforce these emotions, or even generate new types of emotions.
For example, we can use this application to motivate us to exercise, or to cheer us up when we’re feeling down.
So robots don’t need to have a soul to help make us feel more human through music.
Resources:
Artificial intelligence (AI) in automatic music composition based on brain waves developed. http://resou.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/research/2017/20170116_1
