DIGITAL MEDIA PROJECTS AI Song Contest AI Songfestival https://www.vprobroadcast.com/titles/ai-songcontest.html Can artificial intelligence help compose a song that is just as successful as last year’s Eurovision hit by Duncan Laurence? In the AI Song Contest tech- and creative teams from all over Europe and Australia compete, attempting to create the next Eurovision hit with the help of artificial intelligence. Can computers blow us away with their creative power? AI has come to play an important role in our lives, and that role will only grow in the coming years. With the AI Song Contest we want to explore the creative possibilities and limitations of AI. How will the techniques we call AI be of influence to us as creative animals in the future? The AI Song Contest is an online project organised by Dutch public broadcaster VPRO in collaboration with NPO Innovation and NPO 3FM. 13 teams consisting of music producers, artists, scientists and programmers participated in this first edition and explored the creative power of artificial intelligence. The teams came from Australia, Sweden, Belgium, The UK, France, Germany, Switzerland and The Netherlands. The result: 13 super diverse songs that the international audience could listen to and vote for online for one whole month. A panel of international leading AI experts evaluated the songs on AI level. Besides the 13 songs and voting, the website also offered: information about all the teams and the ways they used AI to create their songs; a 5-part YouTube series in which one of the Dutch teams is followed in their process of creating their song; interviews with leading international artists making use of AI in their creative work. The 2020 AI Song Contest edition was concluded on 12 May 2020 with a live stream in which the winning song (Beautiful the World from Australia) was announced. 21 THE NETHERLANDS DIGITAL MEDIA PROJECTS AI Song Contest AI Songfestival Submitting organisation: VPRO Contact: Karen van Dijk – [email protected] Author: Karen van Dijk Director: Daan Veldhuizen Commissioning editor: N/A Producer: Sharon Yosef Co-Producers: NPO 3FM, NPO Innovation Key staff: Idea and content manager: Karen van Dijk Direction, camera, edit: Daan Veldhuizen Production: Sharon Yosef Voice over: Eva Koreman Sound: Chiel Aldershoff Live stream host: Lieven Scheire Website Editors: Jim Schulpen and Jonathan Maas Social Media Editor: Willem Kort Communication: Maud Nass, Maike Dubelaar AI expert panel: Vincent Koops (lead), Ed Newton-Rex, Anna Huang Total Budget: € 150,000 Production context: Stand-alone project, focused on the Eurovision Song Contest time frame. We envisage the event becoming an annual contest. It would present the state of affairs in the field of AI every year, and explore creative applications of AI and stimulate the AI debate. Digital distribution: 12.416 votes from 70 countries. 102.700 page impressions in the project’s runtime between 10 April 2020 and 15 May 2020. 23.039 Livestream views. Exposure in, amongst many others, Science, Financial Times, BBC, NME, Billboard, The Next Web, The Verge, Le Monde, Science vs (Gimlet), Nerdland. Date of publication: 10 May 2020 Competing for: Best European Online Media Project of the Year 21 THE NETHERLANDS .