Högskolan i Skövde

This study explores how respondents perceive human-composed music and AI-computer-composed music. The aim was to find out if there is a negative bias against AI-computer-composed music. The research questions are 1. How is AI-computer-composed music perceived compared to human-composed music? 2. Are there prejudices towards AI-computer-composed music? If yes, what are the prejudices? Four participants took part in a qualitative experiment and a semi-structured interview. Two music pieces were used as artifacts, one was human-composed, and the AI-computer AIVA composed the other. The results showed that although the researchers have not revealed to the participants if they had chosen the AI-computer-composed song or the human-composed song as their favorite, all the participants strongly believed that their favorite song was human-composed. Thus, indicating a bias towards human-composed music The results also showed that the two music pieces were not perceived to have the same characteristics or evoke the same emotions; furthermore, there was some skepticism, whether an AI-computer-composed song could recall the same emotions as a human-composed song. However, none of the respondents explicitly expressed negativity towards AI-computer-composed music.