These pop songs were written by OpenAI's deep-learning algorithm

Old songs, new tricks: Computer-generated music has been a thing for 50 years or more, and AIs already have impressive examples of orchestral classical and ambient electronic compositions in their back catalogue. Video games often use computer-generated music in the background, which loops and crescendos on the fly depending on what the player is doing at the time. But it is much easier for a machine to generate something that sounds a bit like Bach than the Beatles. That's because the mathematical underpinning of much classical music lends itself to the symbolic representation of music that AI composers often use. Despite being simpler, pop songs are different.