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AI can tell what song you are listening to from your brainwaves

By Matthew Sparkes

26 January 2021

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Evgeny Gromov/Getty Images

ARTIFICIAL intelligence has learned to identify the songs someone is listening to from their brain readings.

Derek Lomas at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and his colleagues asked 20 people to listen to 12 songs through headphones. The volunteers did this blindfolded and in a dimly lit room to minimise the effect of their other senses on the results. Each person’s brainwaves were recorded using an electroencephalography (EEG) cap that detects electrical activity.

The EEG readings from each person were cut into short segments and used along with the matching music clip to train an…

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