Can AI Make Musicians More Creative?

Late last year, a team of Sony researchers based in Paris released a pair of new pop songs. One, called "Daddy's Car," straightforwardly echoed the soft '60s psychedelia of The Beatles; the other, "Mr. Shadow," was an electro-ish update on classic jazz à la Duke Ellington or Cole Porter. The songs were just fine (if that), from a critical standpoint. What made them major events was the fact that they were composed using artificial intelligence, specifically using the Flow Machines software developed by Sony's Computer Science Laboratory.