Developer conferences aren’t exactly known for their energetic, party-like atmosphere, but thankfully that didn’t stop Google’s latest hypebeast. The company’s I/O event this year kicked off with Marc Rebillet, an online space artist known for pairing impromptu electronic tracks with interesting (and often loud) sounds. He also wears a lot of robes.
“If you didn’t know who I was, I would have thought of that,” Rabile said. He describes himself as an improvisational musician who “makes things up.”
This makes him perfect for demo DJ mode, which Google recently added to its tool for generating artificial intelligence text to music, MusicFX. Back in February, Adam Roberts of Google DeepMind describes the functionality As an “infinite artificial intelligence jam that you control”.
Rebillet’s stage demo shows off its capabilities in an interesting way. He inputs simple cues like viola, 808 hip-hop beats, and chip music, and the AI music tool produces synchronized tracks that include all of those styles. With guidance from the audience, Rebillet then prompted the AI for a track featuring Persian tar, African drums, and flamenco guitar, and somehow produced a rather compelling tune, layered with improvised vocals and a joke about the morning 9:30 is “too early” to hold an event like this.
Users will see a mixer-style interface that emits music based on text cues, layering them together and synchronizing the resulting tracks. Change the music on the fly by adding extra cues to the mix. Now you can try it yourself on Google’s AI Test Kitchen. MusicFX is still in development since its launch last year.
Rebillet, who has more than 2 million followers on YouTube and TikTok, is best known for his hit “Night Time Bitch” sound clip and song in which he screams at people to get up while wearing a bathrobe. This background information may explain why he crawled out of a giant coffee cup, yelled at all the “stupid little nerds” to wake up, and then launched his rainbow-colored robe into the crowd and shouted “Loop Dad,” This kicks off the I/O.
Bring him back next year, Google. I can’t remember the last time I felt so energized at a tech event.
