The Handpicked Lab wins AI Song Contest 2023

The Handpicked Lab wins the AI Song Contest 2023 with the participating team "Synthetic Beat Brigade" and the song "How Would You Touch Me?". The submitted song is about the unattainable love between human and machine and was developed in the Handpicked Lab, in collaboration with Dennis Van Leeuwen (Kane) and Jurriaan Balhuizen (Postoffice). Together with singer Zoë Lodewijks and producer Bram Kniest (Go back to the Zoo), the song slowly but surely formed itself into a synthetic Europop hit that would sound great on the radio and would also be suitable for the Eurovision Song Contest.

Ai everywhere

Instead of trusting our instincts, various AI tools were used at every step throughout the creation process. For example, analysing existing winning Eurovision songs, conceptual ideation, an open-source GPT-2 model trained on specific rhyme schemes for writing the lyrics, generated instruments and voices, and various mixing and mastering tools.

Music Video

A good song requires a good music video. That's why talented choreographer Nicola Balhuizen Hepp (The Movers Amsterdam) was brought in to create input for a generative image-to-image model. The dance clip was then converted by the Handpicked Lab, frame by frame, into a matching futuristic image while maintaining the dance composition. Although the music video did not play a role in the jury's verdict, it was discussed at the award ceremony and the clip was once again praised.

Ai everywhere

With the creation of this song, we show the creative potential of co-creativity between humans and artificial intelligence in the songwriting process and take a look at the future music industry.
Handpicked Lab