Researcher takes part in €2m project to investigate impact of generative AI on music

Dr Maria Perevedentseva, a Lecturer in Musicology at the University of Salford, will be working alongside principal investigator Professor Christopher Haworth of the University of Birmingham on the research project After Sampling Culture: Synthetic media as culture in twenty-first century music (SYNCULTURE).

The project has received a €2 million Consolidator Grant from the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme and will take place from October 2026 until September 2031.

SYNCULTURE looks to trace the history of contemporary synthetic media like AI-generated audio through the lens of music’s 60 years of engagement with synthetic sound, arguing that this expanded view can shed light on how today’s generative applications are used and understood by professional and amateur creatives.

Across six complementary studies, the project will examine synthesis in music from the standpoints of mathematics, engineering, industry and law to explain how contemporary generative tools shape music and popular culture. 

Dr Perevedentseva said: “My role in the project will be about uncovering how musicians of different stripes make sense of this new era of synthetic media, in which music is being produced with generative AI models.”

“We need to get beyond the idea that ‘synthetic’ means something cheap and fake, and my job will be to analyse the everyday language of musicians, hobbyists and listeners discussing synthetic media online to identify where they locate beauty, authenticity, originality and other musical values.

“There is a gap in knowledge surrounding how people conceptualise synthetic sound and find authentic forms of community and self-expression with it.”

Not only will this research give fans and researchers a new vocabulary for understanding how this music is perceived, but it could also help to enhance the cultural responsiveness of the next generation of text-prompted generative audio models.

“Given the enormous implications of generative AI for human labour, culture and the environment, the SYNCULTURE project as a whole will be about unboxing technological black boxes – lifting the bonnet – so that users can understand how these technologies work and what assumptions and values guide their design and operation.”

After Sampling Culture’s project team involves academics from across the world with Dr Erik Nyström (City St George’s, University of London), Dr Ezra Teboul (Université de Québec à Montréal), Dr Marcin Pietruszewski (Bauhaus Universität Weimar) and Antonia Torfs-Leibman (Birmingham University) also involved. 

After Sampling Culture: Synthetic media as culture in twenty-first century music is funded by the European Union (ERC, SYNCULTURE, 101232294).