Creative AI: Music Composition Programs as an Extension of the Composer’s Mind

Abstract

I discuss the question “Can a computer create a musical work?” in the light of recent developments in AI music generation. In attempting to provide an answer, further questions about the creativity and intentionality exhibited by AI will emerge. In the first part of the paper I propose to replace the question of whether a computer can be creative with questions over the intentionality displayed by the system. The notion of creativity is indeed embedded with our subjective judgement and this prevents us from giving an objective evaluation of an idea or product as creative. In Sect. 2, I suggest to shift the focus of the inquiry to the autonomy possessed by the software. I finally argue that the application of generative adversarial networks to music generators provides the software with a level of autonomy sufficient to deem it able to create musical works.