Australia wins AI Song Contest

An Australian team has won a competition to write a hit Eurovision song using artificial intelligence. An editor for Dutch broadcaster VPRO had the idea, after the Netherlands won last year’s Eurovision Song Contest.

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]nd it grew into an international effort after this year’s contest was cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic. The winning song, Beautiful the World, was inspired by nature’s recovery from the bushfires earlier this year.

A total of 13 teams took part, from the Netherlands, Australia, Sweden, Belgium, the UK, France, Germany and Switzerland.

The Australian team, called Uncanny Valley in a nod to how humans and robots may one day merge, was made up of maths, computer-science and social-anthropology students, as well as music producers.

The melody and lyrics were written by an AI system, trained with audio samples of koalas, kookaburras and tasmanian devils.

Source: bbc.com