I remember reading the biography of a 20th century musician/composer, who said something to the effect of -- "Sure, I can sit down and write 4-part cantatas like Bach did, but that doesn't mean that I'm as great of a composer as Bach. What made Bach so great was that he was the one who figured out how to put these things together in the first place. Once he did that, copying the approach is no big deal."

It seems to me we're at a similar place now with AI tools. If you provided an AI tool with all music written _prior to_ Bach, would that tool take those inputs and create something new along the lines of what Bach did?

Or if provided input of all music up through the 1920s, would it create bebop? Or if provided music through the 1940s, would it create hard bop? Or if provided music through the 1970s, would it create music like Pat Metheny?

On one hand, being able to create more of the same sort of music that already exists is a very respectable thing, and what today's AI tools can do is utterly amazing. It takes human composers time and effort to be able to learn to write music that is certainly not innovative, but just matching the state of the art. And there's certainly a commercial market for churning out more of the same.

But in terms of asking, how close are these tools to human intelligence?, I think this is one legitimate area to bring up.