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Sense & Sound: Five Ways into Taiwanese Pop Musicplain the adjustments needed, the engineering team responded with a request for %u201cdata.%u201d He chuckled, %u201cBut there%u2019s no data for aesthetics; it%u2019s just a feeling!%u201d This challenge ultimately led him to pursue further study at the National Taiwan University Institute of Industrial Engineering, in hopes of better translating between the two disciplines and building a bridge between technology and creativity.AI won%u2019t replace creativity, but it will change the songwritersChen candidly acknowledges that many people still hold doubts about AI%u2019s role in music creation: if a piece is no longer initiated by a human, can it still be called a %u201ccreation%u201d? Yet he asserts that, at its current stage, AI-generated content still requires significant human judgment and professional input before it can be shaped into a releasable work.Take the music production process for Mila Mii as an example. The team didn%u2019t simply input ideas into a system; they had to provide clear instructions and parameters to help the AI grasp the song%u2019s concept and emotional arc. Only then could they extract one or two promising %u201cmotifs%u201d from the massive pool of generated material. From there, human arrangers, live musicians, and a production team meticulously refined and developed the ideas into a fully realized song ready for release.%u201cMany people assume that using AI for creation simply means typing in a few prompts and turning the output directly into a product. But for professional creators, that kind of result is far from ready,%u201d Chen emphasizes. The real skill, he says, lies not in what the AI generates, but in the ability to discern which materials are valuable, and then transform them into complete, compelling works.In fact, this kind of skepticism toward new technologies is nothing new. As far back as forty years ago, the advent of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) also sparked fears about creators being replaced. But in hindsight, those worries never came true. Instead, technology enriched the creative vocabulary and expanded the tools available to musicians. %u201cIn the past, all you needed to write a song was a guitar. Now, you also need to understand MIDI and know how to use a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation),%u201d Chen says with a smile. In an era of rapid technological advancement, it%u2019s not creators who are being left behind, it%u2019s those unwilling to learn new tools.From MIDI to AI, every wave of technological innovation has brought with it uncertainty and anxiety. Yet it is precisely because of this that creators must continually learn and adapt their roles. For Chen, AI is not a threat, it is a powerful extra pair of hands, a far-seeing telescope in the creative process. It helps him stand on the shoulders of giants, enabling him to do more, see further, and unlock new experimental possibilities that were once hard to imagine.%u201cEven with AI, creators still need fundamental musical literacy in order to truly master the technology, instead of being mastered by it.%u201d This is a principle Chen firmly upholds, and it encapsulates his belief in the boundaries of technological application. With this mindset, he and his team continue to develop a growing cast of distinctive, stylistically diverse virtual artists, expanding the ways in which the virtual realm and music can intersect.