MIT's New AI Can (Sort of) Fool Humans With Sound Effects

Neural networks are already beating us at games, organizing our smartphone photos, and answering our emails. Eventually, they could be filling jobs in Hollywood. Over at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), a team of six researchers created a machine-learning system that matches sound effects to video clips. Before you get too excited, the CSAIL algorithm can't do its audio work on any old video, and the sound effects it produces are limited. For the project, CSAIL PhD student Andrew Owens and postgrad Phillip Isola recorded videos of themselves whacking a bunch of things with drumsticks: stumps, tables, chairs, puddles, banisters, dead leaves, the dirty ground.