Doug Eck

Doug Eck describes Magenta’s work on open source machine learning tools for music and art, including sound generation with NSynth and sketch generation with SketchRNN. He explains why current models can produce interesting, imperfect results, and how artists can use those results as material to explore rather than as finished work. The talk covers challenges in evaluating generated media, improving tools for musicians, and using reinforcement learning rewards to steer generative models. Eck argues that machine learning is best treated as part of a creative toolkit, with people shaping how it is used.