With Eurovision 2020 cancelled due to COVID-19, a new international music battle has swooped in to claim the spotlight this May.
Run by Dutch broadcaster VPRO, the world's first international AI Song Contest is trying to find the next Eurovision-worthy song -- generated by robots.
VPRO Editor Karen van Dijk came up with the idea after the Netherlands claimed victory at Eurovision in 2019.
"I thought it could be cool to win again and perhaps artificial intelligence can help us with that," Ms van Dijk told The Feed.
"The idea is to create a song together with artificial intelligence, put a lot of data into a computer and see if it can generate ideas or perhaps a melody and lyrics for a Eurovision kind of song."
And, just like Eurovision, Australia has been included in the field of competitors.
Sydney-based production studio Uncanny Valley has worked with a team of computer scientists from RMIT University and the University of New South Wales to create a song, with the help of artificial intelligence, that they believe has the makings of a Eurovision-winning hit.
Charlton Hill is the head of music and innovation at Uncanny Valley.
"I grew up on Eurovision and to me it was the perfect place to hold an AI song contest because it's such a unique avant garde world," Mr Hill told The Feed.
"When [our AI] came up with some pretty bonkers kind of stuff, we left a lot of it in because it's perfect Eurovision."
Charlton Hill playing the guitar. Source: The Feed
The Australian team took the lyrics and music from past Eurovision songs and fed them into two different neural nets, which generated new melodies and lyrics inspired by past Eurovision entries.
"We had a listen to all the combinations of lyrics and melodies that the computer generated, it was about 500 that we got in the first batch, and just listened through them all objectively: 'What's good about that? Is there anything good about that?'."
"Suddenly the chorus popped out at us."
Their song, Beautiful The World, features Australian native animal sounds, from the koala, kookaburra and tasmanian devil.
Uncanny Valley Producer and Sonic Technologist Justin Shave told The Feed they wanted to create a song that was inherently Australian.
"We thought, wouldn't it be amazing to make an instrument out of Australian animals, particularly after the fires, when so many animals were injured and killed," Mr Shave told The Feed.
Charlton Hill and Justin Shave creating Australia's AI song contest entry. Source: The Feed
Addressing concerns that AI could lead to automation of the music industry, Charlton Hill says, while computers can be used as a collaborative tool to generate ideas, he believes humans will always play a role.
"When something new comes along there's always a lot of fear around what it will do and how it will replace human techniques...but it's not playing out that way," he said.
"It's streamlining processes that we already have, and if it leads to new instruments and a new way of thinking around music that generates new and exciting music, and there's a whole new generation of composers that use AI, then bring it on."
"We very much think it's time to rage with the machine."
Judging for the AI Song Contest will be fifty percent public vote and fifty percent from a judging panel made up of some of the most notable names in the AI community.
