We provide a survey of the field of Music Information Retrieval (MIR), in particular paying attention to latest developments, such as semantic auto-tagging and user-centric retrieval and recommendation approaches. We first elaborate on well-established and proven methods for feature extraction and music indexing, from both the audio signal and contextual data sources about music items, such as web pages or collaborative tags. These in turn enable a wide variety of music retrieval tasks, such as semantic music search or music identification (“query by example”). Subsequently, we review current work on user analysis and modeling in the context of music recommendation and retrieval, addressing the recent trend towards user-centric and adaptive approaches and systems. A discussion follows about the important aspect of how various MIR approaches to different problems are evaluated and compared. Eventually, a discussion about the major open challenges concludes the survey.

The proposed EU regulation for Artificial Intelligence (AI), the AI Act, has sparked some debate about the role of explainable AI (XAI) in high-risk AI systems. Some argue that black-box AI models will have to be replaced with transparent ones, others argue that using XAI techniques might help in achieving compliance. This work aims to bring some clarity as regards XAI in the context of the AI Act and focuses in particular on the AI Act requirements for transparency and human oversight. After outlining key points of the debate and describing the current limitations of XAI techniques, this paper carries out an interdisciplinary analysis of how the AI Act addresses the issue of opaque AI systems. In particular, we argue that neither does the AI Act mandate a requirement for XAI, which is the subject of intense scientific research and is not without technical limitations, nor does it ban the use of black-box AI systems. Instead, the AI Act aims to achieve its stated policy objectives with the focus on transparency (including documentation) and human oversight. Finally, in order to concretely illustrate our findings and conclusions, a use case on AI-based proctoring is presented.

The application of artificial intelligence (AI) to music stretches back many decades, and presents numerous unique opportunities for a variety of uses, such as the recommendation of recorded music from massive commercial archives, or the (semi-)automated creation of music. Due to unparalleled access to music data and effective learning algorithms running on high-powered computational hardware, AI is now producing surprising outcomes in a domain fully entrenched in human creativity—not to mention a revenue source around the globe. These developments call for a close inspection of what is occurring, and consideration of how it is changing and can change our relationship with music for better and for worse. This article looks at AI applied to music from two perspectives: copyright law and engineering praxis. It grounds its discussion in the development and use of a specific application of AI in music creation, which raises further and unanticipated questions. Most of the questions collected in this article are open as their answers are not yet clear at this time, but they are nonetheless important to consider as AI technologies develop and are applied more widely to music, not to mention other domains centred on human creativity.

The use of machine learning (ML) approaches to target clinical problems is called to revolutionize clinical decision-making in cardiology. The success of these tools is dependent on the understanding of the intrinsic processes being used during the conventional pathway by which clinicians make decisions. In a parallelism with this pathway, ML can have an impact at four levels: for data acquisition, predominantly by extracting standardized, high-quality information with the smallest possible learning curve; for feature extraction, by discharging healthcare practitioners from performing tedious measurements on raw data; for interpretation, by digesting complex, heterogeneous data in order to augment the understanding of the patient status; and for decision support, by leveraging the previous steps to predict clinical outcomes, response to treatment or to recommend a specific intervention. This paper discusses the state-of-the-art, as well as the current clinical status and challenges associated with the two later tasks of interpretation and decision support, together with the challenges related to the learning process, the auditability/traceability, the system infrastructure and the integration within clinical processes in cardiovascular imaging.