--- title: "Google Trained a Neural Net to Write Cringey Song Lyrics" description: "Google engineers trained a neural net on thousands of song lyrics and classic novels. It wrote some songs and we think they're fantastic." date: "2018-11-14" modified: "2018-11-15" authors: - name: "Dan Robitzski" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-writes-terrible-lyrics" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Google" tags: - "ai" - "artificial intelligence" - "Google" - "music" - "the digest" --- # Google Trained a Neural Net to Write Cringey Song Lyrics ![Google engineers trained a neural net on thousands of song lyrics and classic novels. It wrote some songs and we think they're fantastic.]() *\Image: Vevo/Victor Tangermann\* ## DJ Roomba Google’s AI lab built an AI system that automatically writes song lyrics, and it’s dropping straight banger after banger. Give the algorithm an opening line, the *[MIT Technology Review ]()*[reported](), and it'll get right to work. Check out what it did with “I’m your big and brave and handsome Romeo” *I'm your big and brave and handsome Romeo* *you know my secret secret* *you have my second estate* *you suit your high origin* *you have my cursed youth* *you have my life* Iconic, right? ## Mr. Roboto In a research paper [published to the preprint server ArXiv]() on Monday, two Google scientists lay out how they trained a neural network to write new songs. They fed the neural net with the lyrics of thousands of songs — anything from country to metal — as well as 13 classic novels like Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” and Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” to help boost the system’s vocabulary. The actual songs [aren't that impressive]() — let’s look at two other songs that started with that Romeo line but didn’t come out as spectacularly: *I’m your big and brave and handsome Romeo* *I’m the man of the woods, I’m the man of the woods.* *I’m the man of the woods, I’m the woods* *I’m the man of the woods, I’m the woods* *I’m the man of the woods, I’m the woods* *I’m the man of the woods, I’m the woods* And then there's this guaranteed classic: *I’m your big and brave and handsome Romeo* *You, and I’ll tell you all about it* *I don’t* *Understand you,* *Said the young man, and we* *Shall be happy to-day* ## Songbird of a Generation What is impressive about these songs is that, at the very least, the sentences generally follow some kind of logic. That’s not to say that an endless loop of being a man of the woods makes any kind of sense, but at least subjects, verbs, and objects more or less line up. The nonsense factor of these new songs shouldn't be surprising, because an algorithm that [genuinely comprehends language]() and converses is still a [distant scientific pipe dream](), currently unattainable with modern technology. Okay, fine, let’s have one more bop. *You told me you loved nobody else, you never would* *you told me you wanted everything else, you never would* *he put his hand on the pillow of the marquis* *he put his cap on the ground like a stone* *he put his hand on the latch of a door* *he put his key in the lock as a key* **That one, at least, brought a tear to my eye.** **READ MORE:** [These awful AI song lyrics show us how hard language is for machines]() \[*MIT Technology Review*\] ***More on AI writing:*** ***[Was That Script Written By A Human Or An AI? Here’s How To Spot The Difference.]()*** ## Author Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California. ### Author social links [Twitter]()