Colombia’s Whale and Jaguar to showcase AI-powered reggaeton composer algorithm

Contxto – An AI-powered Reggaeton lyrics generator competing in a startup competition. This has to be the most Latino tech news of the year.

Whale and Jaguar is a Colombian startup creating artificial intelligence solutions for brand’s strategic communication. The company is one of the 21 chosen companies to participate in Sónar+D Startup Hub 2019 in Spain.

With the hopes of disrupting the event, the startup developed intelligence capable of producing Reggaeton songs from scratch. Basically an algorithm capable of giving both IBM’s Deep Blue and J-Balvin a run for their money.

In Summary 

Sónar+D is an entrepreneurship event affiliated with the Sónar music festival running from July 17 to 20 in Barcelona. Merging both arts and technology, the program provides a new yet very interesting scientific and artistic concept for startups.

Sónar+D is one of the world’s largest events gathering talent around research, development and technology within creative and artistic industries. For this reason, Whale and Jaguar’s vision matched perfectly with the premise. 

Founded in Colombia in 2017 by Nohora Galán and Camilo Vargas, the startup creates tools and platforms to automate marketing and communication processes for companies.

Let’s take a look at its Twitter bio to see exactly what it does: “We are natural scientists who convert reputation data, audiences and trends into strategies and content for your brand, in real-time.”

In-Depth

Presumably, its AI can comprehend human language, applicable to an innumerable amount of tasks. Some of these range from brand-based content creation to automatic audience readings.

Based on this, Whale and Jaguar plans to bring two distinctive tools to the event. One is an audience meter, capable of measuring audience enthusiasm during concerts and artistic presentations. 

On top of that, it recently created the “Mai Fina” algorithm. This artificial reggaeton artist is still a prototype. Nonetheless, it can reportedly write its own lyrics learning from a database of over 7,000 tracks. I really hope it includes Daddy Yankee’s “Rompe” in that database. Sweet stuff.

Not only is the device adaptable to real-time user input and feedback but also able to replicate regional Colombian accents. Some of these include Paisa, Vallecucana and Costeño slang. Fun and entertaining, the applications for this AI seem endless.

“Mai Fina is an example,” said Galán, a physicist and CEO of the company. “But, we could also teach our artificial intelligence to write as if they were authors or musicians, even to draw as artists. We want to make machines create creative content automatically.”

An algo with many rythms

Lyrics is only one of Whale and Jaguar’s applications. However, it’s also focusing on other content such as image analysis. Another one of its algorithms can even draw based on learnings, audience feelings and optimism metrics tested during Copa America.

“Our idea is to use technology to enhance the creative capacity of the teams,” said Galán. “We do it with our culture and with a Colombian, Latin American flavor. We bet on a future in which artificial intelligence will be another tool for artists and creatives to do things that they never imagined possible before.”

Ultimately, Whale and Jaguar’s participation at Sónar+D 2019 will expose the startup to more than just an audience of 60,000. Additionally, it will receive one-on-one meetings with investors and business development mentors.

“Robótica en la pista está luciéndose,” as the man himself used to say. Never before has an analogy of Don Omar’s “Virtual Diva” been more appropriate.

-VC