You’ve probably heard of writer’s block, when authors mysteriously hit a creative impasse in their work, but not many people know that dancers and choreographers suffer from a similar affliction. There are times when they struggle to put together dance routines and movement sequences that are creative and compelling, and yearn for a flash of inspiration.
Facebook’s AI researchers have developed an AI system that can provide those eureka moments — all you have to do is play the music. A system co-created by Research Scientist Devi Parikh analyzes a music track from nearly any genre and, just moments later, cooks up some synchronized moves. The system’s code, which is now available for download, works by detecting quantifiable similarities in a song at two different points in time, then searching for similar mathematical patterns in a giant matrix of dance move sequences.