Australians Win AI Euro Song Contest

The Australian team Uncanny Valley has won the international AI Song Contest with their song, Beautiful The World. The team consisted of music producers, data scientists, and academics including UNSW’s Dr Oliver Brown.

The song was inspired by the recent bushfires in Australia, and incorporated koala, kookaburra, and Tasmanian devil calls. It conveyed a message of hope, as said by the team, “nature will not only recover, but triumph.” Beautiful The World was created using artificial intelligence algorithms trained on previous Australian songs for a unique native sound.

While the lyrics and melody of the song were created by AI, the team did use both a producer and real vocalists to create the final product.

The contest was in the style of the Eurovision concert, which was cancelled this year due to COVID-19 restrictions. The contest was organised by Dutch public broadcaster VPRO and was judged by a panel of experts, as well as global public voting.

Caroline Pegram, the producer and strategist of Uncanny Valley said that the contest promoted “co-creative opportunities that artificial intelligence and machine learning can bring to the music industry.”

“The fact that we were able to use technology to blend in the message of the devastation of the bushfires in Australia clearly struck a chord.”

Dr Brown said that “the competition encouraged knowledge exchange in new and interesting ways.”

By Rida Babar