Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson of Abba. Photo: Filepic
Abba musician Bjorn Ulvaeus believes that artificial intelligence (AI) will be able to write better music than many humans over time.
On Jan 13, during an appearance at the DLD innovation conference in Munich, he pointed out that as many as 100,000 songs and other recordings were released on the Spotify streaming service every day last year.
"Don’t you think that an AI will be able to write better music than a lot of those 100,000 songs a day?" he asked later.
"It will happen. I’m afraid it will happen."
Software that can generate at least parts of songs automatically is already being used in music production.
It has so far been seen mainly as a tool to assist composers.
Ulvaeus, in a sideways swipe at today's music world, doubted that there was enough quality control.
"I worked very hard to be able to recognise garbage."
When he and his Abba partner Benny Andersson composed songs, "And we threw away like 95% of everything we wrote."
"We wrote 15 songs a year on average. So I wonder of those million songs, how many people have thrown away the garbage?" he asked rhetorically.
Ulvaeus used his DLD appearance to make an appeal in support of Ukraine.
"The brave Ukrainians are fighting for freedom," he said. "It’s a proxy war. Because they’re not only fighting for themselves, they’re fighting for us as well. A war that they must win." – dpa
