Robot uses deep learning and big data to write and play its own music

Researchers fed the robot nearly 5,000 complete songs -- from Beethoven to the Beatles to Lady Gaga to Miles Davis -- and more than 2 million motifs, riffs and licks of music. Aside from giving the machine a seed, or the first four measures to use as a starting point, no humans are involved in either the composition or the performance of the music. The first two compositions are roughly 30 seconds in length. Ph.D. student Mason Bretan is the man behind the machine. He's worked with Shimon for seven years, enabling it to "listen" to music played by humans and improvise over pre-composed chord progressions.