Piano Genie vs Oscar stories

Piano Genie is a browser toy that turns eight buttons into a full 88-key piano using a neural network trained on classical performances. Press keys 1 through 8 on your keyboard, the home row, or colored touch blocks, and the model picks plausible notes so you sound like you know what you are doing. The space bar works as a sustain pedal.

Guitar Hero maps fixed note charts; Piano Genie lets you improvise freely. The model was trained on roughly 1,400 virtuosic performances from the International Piano-e-Competition, so the output skews classical rather than pop or jazz. Google Magenta published the research at ACM IUI 2019 and open-sourced the training code.

Anyone curious about music ML who does not read sheet music can use it for a few minutes of fun. The Glitch-hosted demo shut down with Glitch platform changes, but the creator still hosts a working copy at chrisdonahue.com.

Oscar Stories generates personalized bedtime tales where your child becomes the main character. Parents pick settings, characters, and plot details, and the app writes a fresh illustrated story for each night instead of recycling the same book.

Most AI story tools feel like typing prompts into a chatbot. Oscar is built specifically for bedtime: it saves child profiles, guarantees no duplicate stories, adds illustrations automatically, and can turn a tale into an audiobook with soothing narration. You can also drop your child into classic worlds like Alice in Wonderland or The Jungle Book.

The app targets parents of young children who want a new story every night without spending 20 minutes inventing one. Educators have recommended it to over 100,000 families, and the Vienna-based team also ships companion apps like LORA for science learning and Moneyfox for kids ages 6 to 14.