Apple recently acquired AI Music, a startup that creates soundtracks by using artificial intelligence to piece together sounds from royalty-free music. The purchase of the London-based company was reportedly completed in recent weeks, according to unnamed sources speaking withThe startup’s website has been taken down but a cached version shows how AI Music and its “Infinite Music Engine” change and adapt music for publishers, marketers, fitness pros, and other professions.
, AI Music says its goal is to “give consumers the power to choose the music they want, seamlessly edited to fit their needs, or create dynamic solutions that adapt to fit their audiences.”that the startup is “shape-changing” music to shift the way songs are consumed rather than generating music from scratch. One method would be to increase the tempo of a song when someone is running or to slow it down when they are walking.
“It’s that idea of contextual AI. Maybe you listen to a song and in the morning it might be a little bit more of an acoustic version,” said Mahdavi. “Maybe that same song when you play it as you’re about to go to the gym, it’s a deep-house or drum’n’bass version. And in the evening it’s a bit more jazzy. The song can actually shift itself. The entire genre can change, or the key it’s played in.”
Apple declined to comment on the acquisition so we don’t know how much the tech giant paid for the startup or how it plans to use the technology within its own services. We can only speculate at this point, but it seems like the AI could make its way to Apple Music in some form or another. Of course, using AI to essentially make remixes of existing songs would raise all sorts of legal questions regarding copyright.