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Engram is a sampler that turns broken AI hallucinations into music

The Verge — AI· by Terrence O’Brien ·2026-09-27

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On "Engram is a sampler that turns broken AI hallucinations into music"

The interesting move here is inverting what everyone expects from "AI music tools"—instead of using AI to generate finished compositions or vocals, they're using it as a mangling, unpredictable effect processor. That's closer to how musicians actually innovate with gear: the happy accident, the broken tool that sounds cool, not the complete output. For practitioners, this matters because it positions AI as a texture and exploration layer rather than a replacement for human decision-making, which is probably where the non-hype adoption actually lives. If Engram delivers on that premise, it's a different conversation than the thousand "generate a song in seconds" startups.

From the source: Music startup Thoughtful Things has just launched the Kickstarter campaign for its first instrument, Engram. It's a sampler and groovebox that uses AI to mangle incoming audio and even hallucinate completely new sounds. This isn't Suno in a box, though. This isn't a "push-button,

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