"Romania, twelve points!" For sixty-four years, Eurovision has tirelessly delighted fans of wild choreography, colorful costumes and atypical melodies. The ace! The coronavirus, oblivious to the love that millions of viewers have for this musical tradition, forced the organizers to cancel the 2020 edition.
Let the aficionados of the competition reassure themselves, the next generation is assured. Thirteen songs from seven European countries and Australia will compete in an original, entirely digital ... and robotic competition: all of them were composed using artificial intelligence. Organized by the Dutch audiovisual group VPRO, the AI Song Contest brings together musicians, artists, scientists and developers. Their goal is "to explore the creative power of artificial intelligence and the influence it will have on the music industry in the future" .
Until May 10, the public is invited to vote for their favorite song on the competition website, according to four criteria: general impression, lyrics, originality, and adequacy with Eurovision standards . Unfortunately no video clip is available, the creators did not want "glitter and glamor" , yet so characteristic of European competition. Three artificial intelligence experts will then assess the technical qualities of each piece, and then choose the winner on May 12.
Two French teams in the running
Among the competitors, two teams will defend the colors of France in an attempt to symbolically succeed Marie Myriam, the last French woman to have won the Eurovision, in 1978. Produced by the research group Algomus, the title I Keep Counting is presented as " a harmonious combination between artificial intelligence and humans ” . Lecturer at the MIS (Modeling, Information and Systems) laboratory at the University of Picardy Jules Verne (UPJV) in Amiens, Florence Levé explains that their software analyzed the lyrics of hundreds of Eurovision songs, in order to determine the most frequent word groups. Not surprisingly, "life" , "love" , "sun" came out on top. "But in the end, we don't really know what I Keep Counting is really talking about. This can be interpreted as a love song or a countdown of the days until the confinement ends! ” , laughs the researcher.
Algomus will have to compete with the artistic collective DataDada, and their song Je shake the world. Unlike their fellow competitors, they did not use a human voice to interpret the result. Instead, they used Robert de Barretin, a voice assistant developed a few years earlier. Another notable difference: the text. The artists have chosen to highlight the language of Molière, and to retain their Dada origin, which gives all its originality to the lyrics. "I'm Robert de Barretin / Don't call me funny rabbit. My bad ass turns for you / Don't call me funny rabbit . “We did not want syrupy words, we are not in the common creed. We preferred to produce a light and offbeat song , ” says Albertine Meunier, co-founder of DataDada.
Music and AI, a promising couple
The two teams agree in any case on this point: in the musical field, artificial intelligence is not about to replace humans. “Of course it is a great technology, with real potential. The machine makes choices that we would not have imagined and pushes us to our limits. But it remains a tool, we should not expect artificial intelligence to take precedence over humans, ” says Florence Levé.
This competition, however, shows the growing influence of artificial intelligence in the music industry. In 2018, the Hello World album , directed by François Pachet and Benoît Carré, was the first to have been entirely produced using artificial intelligence. Since then, more and more artists have used this technology to invent new melodies, surprising rhythms or surprisingly poetic lyrics.
Artificial intelligence has even invited itself into the Eurovision ecosystem since last year. While the competition was in full swing, the Israeli Izhar Cohen, winner of the 1977 edition, had released in parallel the title Blue Jeans and Bloody Tears. This pure artificial intelligence product, also fueled by hundreds of Eurovision songs, has more than four million views on YouTube to date. Conchita Wurst, Salvador Sobral and Duncan Laurence are worried ...