Unlike the previous three editions (2020, 2021, 2022), the 2023 challenge is focused on generating an artificial music tradition rather than generating a particular form of existing traditional music.

Use any kind of artificial intelligence (one system or many different systems) in any way to generate an artificial music tradition. This could entail symbolic music, audio recordings, lyrics, dances, imagery, costumes, myths, instruments, ephemera, websites, ethnomusicological or anthropological studies, and so on. To make this more concrete some possibilities could be:

• Instrumental music from an imaginary country
• Teetotaler songs of a Nordic community
• Music to accompany royal visits to medieval garderobes
• Alien music practices resulting from the discovery and "decoding" of the record on Voyager 1

Particular inspirations for the 2023 challenge include:

• Aisteach | Preserving the history of Ireland's Avant-Garde
• The CFL Sessions
• The Last LP: Unique Last Recordings Of The Music Of Ancient Cultures (1987)
• The Invention of Tradition, Hobspawn and Ranger (eds), 2012.
• alien listening: Voyager's Golden Record and Music from Earth, Chua and Rehding, 2021

1. By SEPTEMBER 15, register your intent to participate by notifying the organizer.
2. Start generating documentary evidence of your artificial music tradition.
3. Write a document describing your team and technical process, as well as reflecting on issues surrounding cultural appropriation in the submitted work, and clarity regarding its use of data and its intentions.
4. By JANUARY 15, email the organizer:

• a link to download the documentary evidence of your artificial music tradition.
• your document (pdf).

One can see this challenge as a call for work to be considered for a future festival. The judges are “curators”, who are looking to create a compelling program of “music traditions” generated entirely by, or with the assistance of, artificial intelligence. This future festival aims to delve deep in theoretical and practical questions of the application of artificial intelligence to culture, raising awareness of the many issues and dilemmas involved, from the economic and political to the technological and (post)humanistic. The curators seek to programme works showcasing a diversity of approaches and outcomes, and are especially interested in multi-layered work crossing material boundaries, all the while using artificial intelligence in some way or another. The curators are not necessarily looking for finished or complete work, but instead work that has a clear connection to the theme of the festival, showing evidence of deep reflection on the associated issues, and that can contribute to engaging and productive discussion.

The curators retain the right to not programme submitted work for a variety of reasons, including a lack of transparency, a lack of consideration of the use of data from existing cultures, and so on.

This challenge has three aims:

1. to promote meaningful approaches to evaluating music Ai;
2. to see how music Ai research can benefit from traditional music, and how traditional music can benefit from music Ai research;
3. to facilitate discussions about the ethics of music Ai research applied to traditional music practices.

1. "How is this challenge funded?" All of the challenges are part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 864189 MUSAiC: Music at the Frontiers of Artificial Creativity and Criticism).
2. "What happened with the 2020 challenge?"

• See a video of the 2020 challenge, where the focus was on the 365 jigs in O'Neill's 1001.
• Read more about the challenge in Sturm & Maruri-Aguilar (2021) “The Ai Music Generation Challenge 2020: Double Jigs in the Style of O'Neill's 1001''”, Journal of Creative Music Systems. 5(1).

4. "What happened with the 2021 challenge?" Awards are mentioned here Read more about the challenge in Sturm (2022) "The Ai Music Generation Challenge 2021: Summary and Results", Proc. AI Music Creativity conference
5. "What happened with the 2022 challenge?" Awards are mentioned here