WEEK 3: SYNTHETIC MEDIA

In 2021, in Bonn, Germany, Beethoven’s unfinished 10th symphony was played in full. It was “completed” with the help of AI, led by Ahmed Elgammal, director of the Art & AI Lab at Rutgers, and composer Walter Werzowa. The program was trained by “listening” to popular types of music that Beethoven would have listened to in his day, and then was introduced to all of Beethoven’s work he created during his life, to understand patterns and motifs throughout his music. Then, they introduced what exists of notes for his 10th symphony, and the program was able to “fill in the blanks.” This is synthetic media because it uses different types of media to create something new, separated from human interaction.

While I think it’s fascinating and impressive to create this program and write music that sounds a whole lot like Beethoven, at the end of the day, it’s not him. We’ll never know what his actual intentions were with the piece, and if what Elgammal and Wezowa created is true to what he would have made. In a video interview on TODAY, a violinist in the Beethovan orchestra sayd, “I find that the spirit of Beethoven is missing; the humanity of Beethoven is missing.”

The ethical ramifications for this are complicated. I don’t think computers will ever be able to replicate the “humanity” in creating a deeply emotionally powerful piece. I think it does a disservice to artists to claim it can be replicated. It is a cool project, but I don’t believe anyone should claim to be able to finish another person’s work, with the help of a computer or not. The role of AI in music is only growing (another recent example is this AI-created “rapper” FN Meka), and I worry about the loss of the human touch in music composition. I don’t see the process of music writing ever getting completely disposed of in favor of AI-created music, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The “completed” piece below, played by the Beethovan Orchestra in Bonn, Germany, his hometown.