Google is launching a new research project to see if computers can be truly creative

Magenta will use TensorFlow, the machine-learning engine that Google built and opened up to the public at the end of 2015, to determine whether AI systems can be trained to create original pieces of music, art, or video. Much in the same way that Google opened up TensorFlow, Eck said Magenta will make available its tools to the public. Roberts also showed off a simple digital synthesizer program he'd been working on, where an AI could listen to notes that he played, and play back a more complete melody from those notes: The goal of the project, Eck suggested, could well be to create a system that could give a listener "musical chills" with entirely new pieces of music, on a regular basis, as they sit listening to computer-generated music from the comfort of their couch at home. Eck said the inspiration for Magenta had come from other Google Brain projects, like Google DeepDream, where AI systems were trained on image databases to "fill in the gaps" in pictures, trying to find structures in images that weren't necessarily present in the images themselves.