site.btaBulgarian in Bucharest Creates Music Using AI, Composes Song for BTA

A lawyer by education and a product manager by profession, poet and singer at heart - this is how Antoni Peychev from Stara Zagora in South Central Bulgaria, who has been living and working in Bucharest for three years now, introduced himself during our first meeting. He moved to the Romanian capital from London, where he spent over 15 years.

"What I’ve been trying to do lately is turn the poetry I’ve been writing since I was 17 into music. I’ve been singing since I was very young, but I’ve never had musical training. I don't know how to read or write music, I don't play any instruments, yet my poetry has always sounded like melody in my head. Now, for the first time in my life, I can hear my poems as music. I can create a song with my own text, but with arrangement and vocals generated by artificial intelligence," Peychev told BTA.

He explained that the process is not difficult and that there are now entire radio stations that play exclusively AI-created songs.

"The technology is at a level where, if you're not a musician, you might not even realize something was made by AI," he added.

So far, he has created 27 songs in Bulgarian and 27 in English.

"I use a platform that allows me, for EUR 10 a month, to publish songs on all platforms—YouTube, Spotify, etc," Peychev said.

Both his poetry and music are inspired by different stages of his life.

"Like every 17-year-old, it all started for me with unrequited love. Later, growing up abroad and looking at Bulgaria from the outside, I experienced feelings like alienation, searching for myself, anger, confusion. Lately, it's been more about humility," he explained.

"I decided to challenge him to see how he actually uses AI technology and asked him to create music for BTA, explaining that very soon the oldest Bulgarian national media outlet would be celebrating its 128th anniversary," he added.

"I started with ChatGPT, told it BTA has a birthday, shared the news agency's website, explained what BTA is. I asked it to generate prompts for Suno, the music platform I use. I requested two song variations - one slower, one faster - and a few text options. The text isn't amazing, not something a writer or poet would produce, but it's good enough. Then all I did was copy the text from ChatGPT into Suno, copy the paragraph with prompts, press the button, and in about ten seconds it produced two songs," Peychev explained.

The whole process takes three minutes.

"Opinions about AI-created music vary widely. Most professional artists say it has no soul. But AI is just a tool, and everything depends on how we use it. Of course, like any tool, it can be misused. That's why people with experience in art or education have the chance and responsibility to take the tool and teach everyone how to use it. The only constant is change. You can resist it all you want, but it will happen, with or without you," Antoni Peychev said.

He plans to continue making AI music and to publish his poetry in a collection titled Daltonist, to be presented soon in Bucharest. The illustrations will be AI generated. Fifty percent of the proceeds will go to charity and causes related to mental health and education.