Amazon Web Services debuted a keyboard called DeepComposer this week, claiming it’s “the world’s first musical keyboard powered by generative AI.” It has 32 keys, costs $99, and connects to a software interface that uses machine learning and cloud computing to generate music based on what you play.
It’s been unclear who this is for, and many have latched on to the fact that the music it creates just sounds bad. It looks like a consumer product, and Amazon used an over-the-top presentation to hype it, which included what AWS claimed was “the first hybrid AI human pop acoustic collaboration.” (It’s not.)
But actually, the keyboard is intended to be a beginning tool for developers to get into machine learning and music. The device is AWS’s...