Pembroke alumnus Tarik O’Regan features in BBC radio 3 documentary on Music and AI

Honorary Fellow and alumnus Tarik O’Regan (1996, BA Music) is an award-winning composer whose music explores themes of heritage, identity, and collective memory. His work has been recognised with two GRAMMY nominations and includes pieces written for the King’s Coronation and for Pembroke’s 400th anniversary. His compositions span orchestral, choral, operatic and chamber music, but Tarik is now asking what the rise of AI could mean for the modern-day composer.

AI is to 2025 what the World Wide Web was to the 90s. Everyone has something to say about it. Some have embraced it with open arms and little criticism, while others remain sceptical. One thing is for certain, AI is changing the way we think, work, write…and even the way we create. The capacity for creativity is surely the one definite thing we have over robots, a human attribute that Artificial Intelligence can’t replicate. Or is it? A certain anxiety pervades workers in several industries, and the creative industries are no different – will AI replace us? This is the subject of Pembroke alumnus and renowned composer Tarik O’Regan’s recent BBC radio 3 documentary, ‘The Artificial Composer – Music and AI’. 

In the documentary and in a recent article in the Guardian, O’Regan wonders whether organisations in the creative industries, such as the Royal Ballet and Opera, are too quick to “ride the wave” of AI. Are utopian hopes of collaboration between artificial intelligence and human creativity perhaps too quick to dismiss ethical considerations? 

You can read O’Regan’s article in the Guardian here and listen to the BBC radio 3 documentary here.