About whether an algorithmic music project really counts as AI writing its own music.
Has this happened?
Yes 38 (36%)Not sure 28 (26%)No 41 (38%)
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?
About whether an algorithmic music project really counts as AI writing its own music.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Well it's not AI or ML really - it's hand-picked algorithmic composition with additional contributions from human composers.
The holy grail AI composer would be able to generate unique, creative, well-crafted material on demand. Almost every system that has existed thus far generates mostly nonsense, but the results are tweaked or hand-selected by humans. Those that don't hand-select are the ones that sound algorithmic and computer-generated to anyone with remote music ability. That's why the current state-of-the-art in on-demand music generation sounds like elevator music - and to a trained musician you can still tell there's something "off" about it (Jukedeck, etc.).