Can You Hear The Difference Between AI and Beethoven?

Want to learn more about Classical Music? 🎶 Subscribe to my Newsletter 📰:

0:00 The Challenge
0:16 Baroque
1:10 Classical
2:19 Romantic
3:30 Choir
4:36 Film Music 1
5:42 Violin
7:03 Piano
8:12 Film Music 2
9:30 Opera
10:50 Pop Music

[sordidboot]

I have to say, as an amateur violinist, the first violin clip sounded very, very clearly artificial to me. The way that the notes came together just sounded so wrong. AI might understand how the violin sounds at a basic level, but it can't yet understand the mechanics of the violin and how that meaningfully influences the sound.

[killerkat]

Yay! Got 9 correct and failed the Ravel. That tonal change at the end (Am6/ A minor with added F# maybe?) was so unexpected that I thought an AI couldn't reach such coloristic skills... yet. Awesome content, keep publishing!!

[Violin_Boba_Tea]

I got 9/10; missed the pop one. But for the classical if you just follow the line of the music, the AI one just doesn't make any sense.

[soup]

i only got taylor swift and AI mixed up LMFAO maybe that says something

[PensieroMetamofista]

Bruh, frickin AI is better than Taylor Swift 💀.

[ThePainist]

I’m gonna be honest, I think that the selections need to be longer preferably a movement or longer to be able to tell the difference between AI and human. I feel that while an AI can mimic the sound of a human for very short intervals of music, it would have a poor grasp of structure and development compared to something composed by a human.

[bndoherty]

Fun video! As a violinist, the AI played a ton of notes that were impossible/difficult and then Vengerov playing Ysaye was so obvious.

[berendstumphius]

Very interesting comparison. Thank you! Especially the film music (where even the original composers use computergenerated orchestras sometimes) are starting to get hard to distinguish. The tenor singing Mimi è tanto malata doesn't sound like Pavarotti to me, but the AI-version is definitely inspired by his voice.

I wonder what your community (hi everyone) thinks about the implications this has for classical music. On the one hand it feels threatening that computers are getting better in imitating us musicians. On the other hand, the fact that everything we see and hear is increasingly subject to the doubt of 'is it real or AI', might also drive the audience towards the concert halls in search of the 'real' experience. It will still be some years before computers will run around on stage for four hours, singing over the orchestra on top of their lungs whilst fencing and sweating like a pig. So there might still be some hope for us poor opera singers...

[hoangkimviet]

The third quiz is like an absolute win for me.

[qixiangsun]

Me at the opera: ah pavarotti it's real

[d_rivadeneyra]

For me it was very clear because A.I did some weird rhythm and phrasing choices. In the Violin and Piano ones is extremely obvious these points I think.

[ceuthrk]

As for the Beethoven, some people can't tell the difference, to me it's glaringly obvious. You just have to know the style to hear that AI doesn't 'understand' it. The film music would be harder to tell apart as film music doesn't generally conform to a particular style as such and generally is not on the same level in terms of musical intelligence regardless of it's complexity ( I do not mean the number of notes ) as music of that composed by say the likes of Bartok etc...

[Klavieralter]

Tchaikovsky and Ravel were dead give aways... always love to hear them... but I am proud to say I preferred the AI pop to Taylor Swift.

[_julz_]

I got all exept one. But to be honest, i had to guess a lot of the times. Music ai sure has improved a lot in the last few years. Great video!

[sqrti]

Got 9 correct, and wrong about the pop song. If every clip is 1 min long at least, the classical part will be much easier (AIs don't remember what they did during counterpoint...yet).

[actualman]

10/10, piano would've been tough if I wasn't a diehard ravel fan

[gustavmadsen]

as a composer myself I actually guessed correct for 8/9 for the classical pieces, but I think that is definitely due to a selection bias. Time has sort of weeded out all of the unoriginal pieces from the earlier period, so there was a big quality gap between the AI and the real. For the pop song it's whatever, because all pop music sounds the same anyways hahaha

also wanna add, that I would've probably just called it bad writing if I wasnt specifically looking for AI, but it is totally believable as human music

[pokmanl]

I mean to find the AI piece all you really have to listen to is the harmony. If it’s colorful, then it’s definitely human. If it’s extremely standard, it’s either a mediocre composition or just AI. AI draws from what is most standard, which is why human pieces sound so much more interesting.

[jordidewaard]

I got em all other than the film music (2). Violin wasn't that difficult for me (first one was WAY too perfect with no sound gaps at all, as if the bow never left the strings).

Choir was also way too monotone in their volume.

I suppose I should be glad that we are still able to differentiate though

[larmkaartdev]

Not too hard, 8/10 the only things that got me were the choir and opera, but I never listen to those anyway. The dead giveaway for the violin was it playing harmonies that (I think) aren't even possible, the piano one was just a jumbled mess.

The film scores aren't too hard if you pay attention to the way the strings are played. AI just uses straight 'samples' while humans create different textures using the bow.

For the other music it's just listening to the emotions/ideas the pieces are trying to convey, and in general AI just sounds very wonky. AI also seem to have a hard time with string polyfonie