Overseasidol.com — On September 15, a television program titled “Forbidden Battle: Human vs AI, Which Song Will Win?” drew major attention in Japan.
The show featured a songwriting battle between Yasushi Akimoto, the famous lyricist behind AKB48, and “AI Akimoto”, an AI trained on his past works using Google Gemini.
Akimoto wrote the song “Cécile”, a retro-style track about a girl admiring another girl. Meanwhile, AI Akimoto created “Omoide Scroll”, a techno-pop piece reflecting heartbreak in the smartphone era.
Both songs were performed by selected AKB48 members and released for public voting.
The results shocked many. “Memory Scroll” won with about 14,000 votes, surpassing “Cécile”, which earned around 10,000 votes.
The AI-driven process even included data-based member selection and emotional analysis to determine the song’s center.
Although Akimoto lost, he welcomed the challenge. In an earlier interview, he said, “If AI can write better songs, that would make me happy. I want to discover ideas I never thought of before,”.
“Omoide Scroll” is now available on Apple Music and Spotify, while “Cécile” has been removed from YouTube.
