Will robots ever be able to play the guitar?
(By Kostas Grigoreas)
Condensed into article form from the Lecture at the 33rd Patras Classical Guitar Festival, 2026
Speaking to an audience at a classical guitar festival, this question sounds almost rhetorical. Almost offensive. The answer seems ready before the sentence is even finished: "No. That's absurd."
The question, of course, is not meant literally. The "robot" here is a metaphor — for any mechanism, digital or living, that produces music without experiencing it.
And today that mechanism has a name: artificial intelligence.
Be that as it may, there is a reason for your reaction. When we talk about classical guitar, we're not just talking about sound. We're talking about touch, about the finger resting on the string, about a body leaning over the instrument and sensing its vibrations. About something deeply physical and human.
And yet — the answer isn't so simple, it isn't a yes or a no. We live in an age where technology evolves in such a way that every few months something that once seemed impossible becomes reality.
Part One: When technology liberates
There was a time — not so long ago — when organizing a concert or a recording required an entire small "army" of people: copyists, proofreaders, musical assistants. People who wrote out the parts by hand, tried them, corrected them, rewrote them. And if you took part in that process — so many hands, so many interventions — there were more than a few times you'd wonder: is there really just one creator here? Today, a notation program bypasses all of that. You write, you hear it immediately, you correct, you experiment while listening to the piece on a decent digital demo.
What once required weeks is now instant. A huge saving of creative energy — and, perhaps more importantly, a more honest representation of the actual creator.
And to this result have been added wonderful sound tools that round out the final presentation with sounds and effects. As well as genuine electronic instruments that enrich the expressive palette of the contemporary music creator.
An even bigger change, though, took place in recording.
Let's take an example that's characteristic for us performing musicians. Recording a solo album was once almost out of reach — it wasn't enough to be a good musician, you needed the right connections or to win a major competition. And when the opportunity came, it came with anxiety: a solo recital in a few hours of studio time, with no room for error, no second chance. That tension affected everything — the sound, the technique, even the musicality.
Today, what once required two rooms of equipment and many thousands of euros fits into a small suitcase. The musician can record, fix, repeat — get exactly where they want to be. And then release the music, without obstacles, on the countless music distribution platforms.
So here, technology is a "godsend": the ability to work "like a painter in his studio," to create in your own space and reach a final result without depending on the many stages of a production process that is often not fully under your control.
Music education, too, has gained many useful technological tools for more efficient study, and for a better understanding of the technical and theoretical problems faced by anyone who wants to deepen and improve their understanding and performance.
So this, in short, is the unquestionably positive side of technology in our own field, that of art-music. (Getting into its explosive and multifaceted impact on commercial music is, of course, not something that concerns our discussion here.)
Part Two: Where things get complicated
But it's one thing to use a tool to express yourself, and quite another for the tool to express itself in your place.
If we look at the field of music production today — in film, television, streaming platforms — we'll notice that the largest share of the music we hear doesn't come from a physical orchestra. Most composers now build even an entire orchestra digitally, and only for something particularly distinctive — a solo, an atmospheric detail — do they use an actual instrument. And often the result is convincing: if you hear it within the overall production, it's hard to tell the difference.
This material isn't "fake" in the simple sense — it's built from real sound samples of real instruments and from coded interpretive clichés drawn from real musical performances. But the problem lies elsewhere: the more these same tools are used, the more a common sound, a common aesthetic result, takes shape. Convenience leads to ready-made musical clichés with guaranteed success. And we've already begun to feel this: musical works that sound alike — not because their creators lack talent, but because their tools are the same, their sound libraries are the same, and the market steers everyone toward the easily achievable, successful formula. In the end, what started out as a supporting tool tends now to become the lead player.
(Note: "model" is also the term for the "mind" of an artificial intelligence system — the body of data, rules, and training that determines how it "thinks" and produces results. In music, such a model has been trained on vast quantities of musical material and can analyze, suggest, and create based on that knowledge.)
Let me offer two revealing, positive examples from the past regarding the correct use of different creative tools: Film composer John Williams writes the music for Star Wars (1977) at enormous production cost and using a full symphony orchestra, among other resources. At almost the same time (1981), Vangelis Papathanassiou writes Chariots of Fire entirely in his own studio, alone, with his electronic instruments. Both were honored with awards, both created work that has stood the test of time — each supreme in its own kind. What they had in common: they were the ones holding absolute control over the tools they chose, they were the real creators of the sounds and ideas. Their works can now be considered classics.
Part Three: The age of total deception
The "robot" of the title, however, has no hands — it has unbelievably sophisticated algorithms.
And so we arrive at today's astonishing development: artificial intelligence systems that can produce music from scratch, with almost no human intervention, using digital models trained on an ocean of human musical creation. You can tell the system: "Take this piece and turn it into jazz." Or: "Make something in the style of rembetiko." And the system delivers — complete, convincing to the average listener.
A good musician could always do something similar — arrange a theme into another style. What's new is that this now happens without the musician, and the result arrives already finished. And social media have been flooded with such creations. Just as today we can see videos of a politician saying things he never said, the same is now happening with music. I have no doubt that soon, if someone relies solely on technical elements — composition, production, orchestration — it will be extremely difficult to detect the degree of authenticity of a digital musical creation. Only the aesthetic judgment of a musically educated listener will be able to uncover the deception.
But the question remains: in such an age, what can the truly creative role of the performing musician be? And if we accept the undeniable fact that using artificial intelligence as a supporting tool can serve the musician, what happens when it gains the ability to partly or even fully replace him?
Part Four: The value of the authentic, and the musician as its bearer
Through these dystopian paths we arrive at a conclusion that is — oddly enough — optimistic.
Do you remember the first time you saw a cat open a door? You laughed, because it was a genuine event — the cat had managed it, had gone beyond its limits. Now there are videos circulating of cats doing karate and playing the piano. Almost no one bothers with them anymore. Because emotion and admiration need truth.
There is always a musical audience — though unfortunately not the largest one — that seeks out the real thing. That goes to the concert precisely because it knows that what it will hear cannot be prefabricated. This audience has always existed. And our job is to sustain it, to cultivate it, to grow it.
Our core argument is that Art is a human action and a human need. Nothing can replace the presence of a person on stage playing at that very moment — without editing, without correction, without a second chance. We need to remind everyone that emotion works differently from mere impressiveness. It needs truth. And what happens on a stage cannot be repeated, cannot be manufactured, cannot be coded.
But a recording (or a video) has its own precious truth as well. It isn't merely a capture — it's the record of a moment that will never happen again. That particular interpretation, on that particular day, with that particular state of mind and those particular choices. It cannot be repeated, cannot be manufactured, cannot be coded. What sets it apart from an artificial production isn't technical polish — it's the human presence that has remained within it. And it stays there forever.
We live in an age with a great many musicians of exceptional technique — unbelievable speed, absolute clarity, technical perfection, interpretation with flawless expressive clichés. Technology has played its part here too: musical training has never been more accessible — nor has the physiology of the human body, and the possibilities for improving its performance, ever been so thoroughly studied. The field has been flooded with guitarists, violinists, pianists performing works at speeds and with effects that inspire awe. And yet — this is not necessarily art. Art requires a human being who lives, who experiences, who has something to say. Who has let other arts touch him as well. An artist needs time — not only to study, but also to listen, to read, to travel, to fall in love, to live.
A "performance musician" who has not lived and has not cultivated himself, however talented, has nothing substantial to say — even if he "plays perfectly." Besides, this is something a machine will very soon be able to do too — identically, and inevitably at some point even better, since a machine has none of our human limits. Perhaps this, paradoxically, is where artificial intelligence will end up doing something positive: it will strip away the sterile display of technical prowess from center stage and force us to return to what matters — to why we play, to what we want to express.
What ultimately remains — and it's the hardest part — is for each of us to answer the question: what do I have to say? Not what can I play, not how fast or how cleanly. But which works I have to offer, and what interpretive view of them I bring with me to the stage or to the recording that no one else can bring. What is my own voice — not as finger technique or interpretive skill, but as human presence. And this isn't answered with more practice. It's answered with more cultivation and more life experience.
Part Five: The audience we need to build
But all of this doesn't concern only musicians. It also concerns those we play for.
There's a dimension to this discussion that we often overlook: the musical education of the audience. An untrained listener cannot grasp anything we've been talking about. They cannot tell an authentic interpretation apart from a technically flawless but empty performance. They cannot understand why a single musician alone with a guitar can be incomparably more meaningful, or even more impressive, than a lavish production. They cannot perceive the difference between a work that has something to say and an AI-made construct that simply sounds appealing.
This exact untrained listener is the natural "customer" for all the cheap musical constructs out there. It's the one who will take the bait. Who will believe the cat is really playing the piano. Who will hear a piece or a song made by an algorithm and say "how lovely."
The musically uneducated listener has no tools with which to resist the leveling-down — because they don't know what they're missing.
And this is where our responsibility as educators and as musicians becomes enormous. It's not enough to produce good musicians. We must also produce good listeners. We must teach people how to listen, how to discern, how to recognize what is real. How to tell apart an interpretation that carries a lifetime imprinted on it from a performance that is merely flawless. How to grasp why the simplicity of a single musician on stage can be more powerful than a thousand effects. So our concern isn't only the talented student — it's anyone who loves our art.
This work needs to happen in conservatories, in schools, in concert halls, in the conversations that follow a recital. It needs to happen every time a teacher explains to a student why a piece is great — not merely how difficult it is. Because if we don't produce educated listeners, all of this — authenticity, personal voice, the value of live performance — will remain fine talk among artistic circles, among people who already understand. And the world outside will keep consuming whatever the algorithms serve it.
Musical education is not a luxury. It is the only real defense against this leveling-down — but also the healthy process that ensures the professional survival of the musician in an age when technology narrows his role, covering many of the field's less demanding needs.
Epilogue: So — will robots end up playing the guitar?
The answer to the literal question — that is, whether a mechanical hand can press the strings correctly — is: yes.
But that was always the least interesting part of the question.
Technically, there's no reason it couldn't happen, even literally — a robot that grips the strings with precision, presses the notes correctly, plays at speeds beyond human limits. And for certain kinds of music — dance, ambient, commercial soundtracks, advertisements, video games — that may well be enough, putting the economic livelihood of professional musicians seriously at risk, much as is already happening in other creative fields (graphic designers, animators, photographers, and so on).
But the real question for those devoted to art-music was never that. The question was: will machines ever be able to feel genuine emotion, and to move us?
Some will say: why not?
If emotion is merely brain chemistry, recognition patterns, a sequence of stimuli — then perhaps it could one day be coded and reproduced indistinguishably. But emotion isn't only an outcome. It is a human moment. It is presence. It is knowing that, right there, inside that sound — whether you experience it live or encounter it recorded — there once was a person, exposed, fragile, who decided to bring that note into being just so, exactly so.
It isn't just sound. It's the trace of an act that took place. And it's in that trace that what we call art is born.
Yes, robots will play the guitar too. They will imitate the movements, copy the nuances, fool the ear. But the world will never truly stop before them. It will only stop before what still carries the trace of a human decision.
Because that is not just virtuosity.
It is presence. And presence cannot be programmed.
(Read the full lecture in Greek HERE)
Kostas Grigoreas
Guitarist, Composer
grigoreas.gr
Patras, April 2026
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AI tools disclosure:
The images in this article were created with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and serve a purely supporting, illustrative purpose, without of course laying any claim to "artistic merit." The final language proofreading of the text was also carried out with the assistance of AI tools. The content, opinions, documentation, conclusions, and overall responsibility for the article belong exclusively to the author.
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Page technical editing by Kostas Grigoreas
(The content of the text, the photographic, video, or audio material, as well as the editing of the article, are the responsibility of the author)
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