Where other robotics researchers are giving us driverless cars, the University of Toronto has gone in a more creative direction: neural karaoke! In a new article at The Guardian, humanity is warned of a introduced to a project to teach computer programs to create music and dance. First the neural network was trained on 100 hours of online music. Once it had successfully created melody and programmed a stick figure to execute rudimentary dance steps, the computer was shown a series of images to allow the program to mach them with suitable lyrics. Finally, the computer was given Christmassy images, and produced a perfectly competent Christmas carol.
Click through to listen to your future robot overlords singing.
“The best Christmas present in the world is a blessing/I’ve always been there for the rest of our lives.” OK, so it’s no “Patrick Swayze Christmas” (the best carol ever written by a ‘bot) but this is already a better song than “Wonderful Christmas Time.”
You can learn more about the project over at The Guardian!
