Yaboi Hanoi wins the 2022 AI Song Contest!

On Wednesday, 6 July the winner of the international AI Song Contest 2022 was revealed in a live-streamed Award Ceremony in Liège, Belgium: Yaboi Hanoi’s song “อสุระเทวะชุมนุม” / “Enter Demons & Gods” convinced the public and an expert jury and won in the contest of 46 songs of impressive variety: pop ballads in various languages, hip-hop, K-Pop, Thai bass music, EDM and a lullaby that a father composed for his daughter.

The AI Song Contest is an international music competition now in its 3rd edition of exploring human AI-co-creation. The winner is chosen by combining the scores from a public online vote (up to 12 points) and a formal evaluation from an expert jury consisting of academics, artists and industry representatives (also up to 12 points). Team PAMP!’s “AI-LALELO”, representing a modern approach to Galician cantigas, was the public favorite, earning 11.3 points in the online vote and 9.1 points from the jury. “Enter Demons & Gods” by Yaboi Hanoi was the jury’s favourite, earning 10.8 points, and combined with 10.3 points from the online vote, it became the winning song of the AI Song Contest 2022.

“Enter Demons & Gods” is a vibrant bass track co-created with artificial intelligence involving Southeast Asian musical traditions with instruments like the Thai oboe Phi. This original and novel approach shows how artificial intelligence can empower musical traditions from different, also non-western, cultures. Yaboi Hanoi is the Bangkok-born musical brainchild of Lamtharn “Hanoi” Hantrakul, fusing his unique background as a composer, award-winning Cultural Technologist and Audio AI Research Scientist. 

The ceremony marked the final event of the AI and Creation Day, a one-day conference on artificial intelligence and creativity organized and hosted by the AI Song Contest at the Wallifornia Music and Innovation Summit. The contest was organized by Hendrik Vincent Koops, John Ashley Burgoyne, Anna Huang, Rujing Stacy Huang, Rebecca Leger and  Ryan Groves. The AI Song Contest 2022 has been sponsored by Sony CSL, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Music Publishing, Amanotes, Infinite Album, Replicate AI, Voiceful, the Amsterdam Music Lab and Wallifornia MusicTech.