Creativity Squared: On A.I. Music, Creativity & Intentionality

Dear Creativity Squared Member,

Today’s guest shared that it was an honor to be on Creativity Squared, but truly, the honor is all mine…and ours.

Be inspired in Episode 22 now by the transformational power of sound to heal, and discover how the magic is being unlocked with artificial intelligence.

From the world capital of music, today’s guest is Walter Werzowa, an internationally acclaimed Austrian composer, producer, speaker, and professor at mdw - the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.

With over 30 years of experience in the music industry, Walter is a passionate and visionary leader in audio branding and A.I. music. His mission is to explore and advance the intersection of music, technology, and human emotions and to inspire and empower others with the power of sound.

He has created and produced award-winning music and sound design for global brands as well as for films, commercials, and trailers. Notably, he composed the ubiquitous INTEL audio branding, which is the most performed mnemonic and melody in broadcast history. His extensive work in film includes scoring for Steven Spielberg, Wim Wenders, and many more.

Walter recently collaborated with Harvard, Rutgers, and Cornell on the Beethoven X: The AI Project, which utilized A.I. to complete Beethoven’s unfinished 10th Symphony.

Currently, Walter is the Head of Music at MYTHOS MOZART, an immersive experience that brings to life the magic of Mozart in collaboration with renowned A.I. artist Refik Anadol.

He is also an Advisory Board member at Spatial Inc., a company that creates spatial audio for virtual and augmented reality.

Walter and I recently met at the BOLD Unconference, a fantastic and inspiring event that the Austrian Chamber of Commerce hosted across four cities in Austria, including a stop in Linz for Ars Electronica. And I’m so excited to share our conversation with you that started over a dinner in the Ars Electronica Museum.

In Episode 22, you’ll discover how A.I. is unlocking the profound impact of music as medicine, along with Walter’s work on the Beethoven X: The AI Project and his collaboration with A.I. artist Refik Anadol on MYTHOS MOZART.

Walter’s love and joy for music is contagious as well as his passion for supporting composers' creativity — I hope you enjoy this conversation!

I love our growing Creativity Squared community, including the one here locally in Cincinnati. Join me and others interested in all things A.I. at the CincyAI Meetup for Humans, cohosted by Creativity Squared, on Tuesday, October 17, at the UC Digital Futures building from 3-5pm ET. Sign up now — spots are limited and filling up almost as quickly as Adobe’s new generative fill feature (sorry, couldn’t help myself ;).

The UC Digital Futures building is Cincinnati’s most future-forward innovation space and just celebrated its Grand Opening 2.0. Even if you’re not local, stay tuned for a glimpse into their extended reality research here and on the podcast!

Scroll on to discover:

• 🎧 More on Episode 22

• 🤯 A.I. + Creativity News Roundup

• 🤝 CincyAI Meetup for Humans

• 👯‍♀️ Digitally Clone Yourself!

• 💎 Creativity Squared Premium Member Benefits

• 💝 Milestone Rewards

We’re just getting started, and if you enjoy our content, I’d really appreciate it if you could share, review, like, subscribe, leave a comment, and help spread the word about Creativity Squared in whatever way you’re willing to. Your support is greatly appreciated, and the whole team looks forward to growing with your help. Thank you!

Here's to exponential possibilities!

Helen

Also Noteworthy:

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How creatives are collaborating with A.I.

Listen: E22. Decoding Music with A.I.
Unlock the Magic of Beethoven, Mozart, and Music as Medicine with World-Renowned Composer Walter Werzowa

Apple | Spotify | YouTube | Pandora | Amazon | Google | SoundCloud | iHeart Radio

This is an excerpt from the accompanying blog post for Episode 22.

Opportunity came calling again in 2020 when Dr. Matthias Röder, Managing Director of the Karajan Institute, asked Walter if he would like to write with Beethoven.

The goal of the project, dubbed Beethoven X, was to honor the famous composer’s 250th birthday by completing the famous unfinished 10th Symphony with assistance from a custom-built A.I. model. Beethoven had hardly begun the 10th Symphony by the time he died, leaving behind only sketches of ideas and musical phrases.

Walter agreed to join the team, working on the input side to annotate musical themes for the A.I. to learn, and on the output side composing the notes that the model generated into a proper symphony.

“That call was a life changer. Of course, I said yes. It was just an incredible learning process. I think those two years taught me as much as all of university.” -Walter Werzowa

Early on, the team realized that Beethoven did not produce enough material in his lifetime to give the A.I. a true idea of how the composer approached his work. So the team selected works from Beethoven’s influences such as Mozart and Bach added them to the training data.

Through the process of figuring out the best way to get a computer to resemble one of history’s greatest musical minds, Walter says he gained a new perspective on the meaning of creativity.

Walter recounts an early conversation with the rest of the team, where he wanted to review the musical rules that Beethoven had in his time so that they could establish those same rules for the A.I. to follow. Coming from the academic world, Walter says he thought that there needed to be strict rules and agreement on a common understanding of musical structure.

The project’s A.I. lead, Rutgers University Professor Ahmed Elgammal, and others pushed back, arguing that embedding such rules in the model would lead to a product that one of his students might write: musically correct and aligned with Beethoven’s body of works, but not true to the innovative, avant-garde, style of Beethoven’s later works in particular.

“I started realizing what creativity is about, and what Beethoven's creativity is about, and the constraints we give ourselves sometimes. And I really believe it's great to learn. But there needs to be a point where you just let go and do your stuff. And that's what we did.” -Walter Werzowa

For two years, Walter says he would wake up at 5 a.m. to listen to the MIDI files and themes sent over by Elgammal. Sometimes the output he received was, in his words, “awful.” But most of the time, the musical ideas generated by the model were “incredible and inspiring,” to the point that Walter says some days he was moved to tears while sipping his morning coffee.

The team released their final product in October 2021 via a performance by the Beethoven Orchester Bonn in the composer’s birthplace of Bonn, Germany. The team’s 10th Symphony garnered both acclaim and skepticism

Walter recounts how a famous German journalist asked how the A.I. could produce music like Beethoven when the A.I. could never feel love or heartache like Beethoven did. The question strikes at a fundamental debate happening right now on whether A.I. can be considered the “creator” of a work, when the technology appears to lack all of the human elements and experiences that we traditionally associate with creativity.

For the sake of Beethoven X though, Walter says that the focus isn’t on whether Beethoven was ever in love, but more so on how he expressed those feelings in the creation of his music.

“And if we analyze this, we get his way of love sickness, and no human could do this [analysis]. So in that sense, the A.I. is incredibly objective and neutral. And to me, it was an incredible partner to get inspired and put things together. It really ended up being a beautiful teamwork between humans and technology.” -Walter Werzowa

Check out the full conversation with Walter and the accompanying blog post for Episode 22 today.

Your A.I. + Creativity News Roundup

With all of the A.I. news flooding our feeds and screens, we’ve got you covered. News to check out includes:

• All the news from Meta Connect 2023 The Verge — In a dizzying array of announcements, all captured in this article, Meta announced a lot yesterday, including Emu, Meta’s A.I. image generator, and it looks pretty good. It stands for “Expressive Media Universe,” and it’s Meta’s answer to DALL-E and MidJourney. Other news included more A.I. news, including chatbots to Threads to the future of smart glasses to the upcoming Quest 3, and more A.I. product announcements.

• Expanding access to safer AI with Amazon Anthropic — Amazon is putting $4 billion into a partnership with the company behind the large language model, Claude 2, to “develop the most reliable and high-performing foundation models in the industry.” The two tech companies will share services, with Anthropic getting access to build on the AWS cloud infrastructure and AWS enterprise clients getting access to fine-tune Claude 2 for their own applications within their existing cloud environment.

• ChatGPT can now see, hear, and speak OpenAI — All-in-one multimodal generative artificial intelligence has officially arrived with the release of new voice chat and image interpretation features in ChatGPT. Users can now have a conversation with the chatbot using their voice instead of text prompts, listen to a spoken response from ChatGPT, and ask questions about photos they upload to the model. The new features bring A.I. closer to functioning like an artificial assistant from science fiction. Voice features are available on mobile apps, while image functionality will be available on browsers as well. New features are limited to Plus and Enterprise subscribers for now.

• Spotify is going to clone podcasters’ voices — and translate them to other languages The Verge — Language barriers in podcast distribution are breaking down thanks to a new partnership between the music streaming giant and OpenAI. Spotify is currently using OpenAI’s Whisper technology to pilot Spanish translation with a handful of prominent podcasters. They’re planning to roll out French and German translations with a larger group of podcasters in the near future.

• Bill would criminalize 'extremely harmful' online 'deepfakes' ABC News — Newly proposed federal legislation seeks to curb the disturbing rise of involuntary A.I. cloning used in misinformation campaigns and sexual harassment. New York’s Democratic Representative, Yvette Clarke, revived the bill from a 2019 version now that A.I. is enabling more sophisticated deepfakes. The bill would establish criminal penalties for producing deepfakes and provide resources for prosecutors and victims to combat the technology.

• No plan to ban AI music on Spotify, CEO says Reuters — Walking a fine line between the use cases of A.I. in music, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said in an interview that a wholesale ban of A.I. technology is not on the horizon. Ek distinguished A.I. tools such as auto-tune (which have long been used in music production) from more controversial applications such as the viral songs that the platform previously removed for cloning the voices of popular musicians. Ek said that the boundaries of A.I. in music will be debated for decades to come.

• ChatGPT's Voice Feature Sparks Fierce Debate About Using It for Therapy Business Insider — A senior safety official at OpenAI is catching flak this week for promoting the therapeutic benefits of ChatGPT’s new voice chat feature. Lillian Weng said on X that she had a “quite emotional, personal conversation" with the chatbot prior to its public release, comparing the experience to a therapy session (before admitting she’s never been to therapy). Critics said the model’s safety measures are not advanced enough to guarantee that users may not be misled or harmed by ChatGPT’s responses.

• Hollywood writers' strike ends with first-ever protections against AI VentureBeat — The Writers Guild of America voted to end their historic strike on Wednesday after reaching an agreement with Hollywood studios. The deal limits when A.I.- generated writing can be used in a script, and prohibits studios from requiring that writers use A.I. assistance. As of this week, the Hollywood actors’ union is still striking in pursuit of protecting their likenesses from A.I. cloning.

CincyAI Meetup for Humans
Hot Off the Press with Our First Event

🤝 Join Creativity Squared at the first CincyAI Meetup where we share the amazing things people are doing in A.I. in our community and collaborate with others.

📅 October 17
3-5 pm
UC Digital Futures Building, Room 140
Free. Seating is limited.

🙋‍♀️ Sign up now!

🌟 Who Should Attend?
A.I. Enthusiasts
A.I. Leaders
A.I. Engineers
A.I. Artists
Anyone A.I.-Cuious!

🚀 This isn't just an event; it's the start of a vibrant, supportive community. At CincyAI, we believe in the power of collective wisdom to drive the A.I. revolution forward. Don't miss your chance to be a part of this dynamic community where the whole is not just greater, but exponential in its impact.

🙌 This is cohosted by Kendra Ramirez (KR Digital Agency) and Helen Todd (CreativitySquared.com), and sponsored by MAX Technical Training.

Can’t make it in October? Sign up for our next one, taking place Tuesday, November 14, from 3-5 pm at Digital Futures Building.

Sign Up: Digitally Clone Yourself
Now There Can be Two of You!

👯‍♀️ In case you missed the announcement, I’ve digitally cloned myself! There are less than a thousand known custom synthetic avatars in existence. Learn all about mine in episode E14. Not Deepfaked! I Cloned Myself. You’ll meet Helen 2.ODD, my digital double, and discover why and how I made my A.I.-created custom synthetic avatar.

🙋‍♀️ Want your own custom synthetic avatar? Creativity Squared is collaborating with our partner and sponsor Render to bring their avatar experience to Cincinnati, OH, on October 25 and 26, so anyone can digitally clone themselves. If you’re interested in this, sign up here.

Thank You to Render

Creativity Squared is supported by Render which provides Digital Likeness solutions for personal brand businesses, thought leaders, influencers, and business leaders who want to leverage their synthetic, A.I.-powered Likeness to communicate more effectively online and create audio and video content from anywhere without going on camera. Learn more by visiting: https://rendermedia.ai.

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