Meet the Artists Using Coding, AI, and Machine Language to Make Music

Ever since the first artificial neural network was built in 1951 by researchers at MIT, artificial intelligence has gradually muscled its way into a wide range of areas: video games, search engines, healthcare, smartphones, and transport. AI programs have already learnt how to imitate Bach and the Beatles, and at the end of last year, researchers even trained a neural network to produce "original" metal in the vein of Krallice, Meshuggah, and the Dillinger Escape Plan. Yet while the doom-mongers are predicting that even human creativity will eventually be made obsolete by robots, a growing wave of artists are using AI and algorithms to take their own music in new and exciting directions. Some are using machine learning to teach software to compose music they later play themselves, while others are using live coding to program electronic music that's improvisational, unpredictable, and surprisingly human. Either way, the 10 artists in this list are not only harnessing high-technology to make unique and progressive music, they're also showing how the rise of AI doesn't necessarily mean the death of creativity. One of last year's best examples of live coding, Belisha Beacon's debut This Is Fine uses the ixi lang programming language to create minimal, looping techno.