Thank you for the music: Abba songwriter uses AI 'collaborator'

After bringing a blockbuster hologram version of Abba to a purpose-built venue in east London, Björn Ulvaeus's next technological exploration is a musical that he has written with the help of artificial intelligence.

- Lanre Bakare

Ulvaeus told an audience at SXSW London that he was "three-quarters" of the way through writing a new musical which he has created by embracing assistance from AI song-writing tools.

The 80-year-old musician did say the technology had some limitations when it came to songwriting, admitting it was "lousy" at writing a whole song and "very bad at lyrics", but it was helpful whenever he reached a creative impasse.

"You can prompt a lyric you have written about something, and you're stuck maybe, and you want this song to be in a certain style," he said. "You can ask it, how would you extend? Where would you go from here? It usually comes out with garbage, but sometimes there is something in it that gives you another idea."