Berklee Launches AIMS, an Artist-Centered Summit on Music and AI

Berklee Launches AIMS, an Artist-Centered Summit on Music and AI Hosted by the Berklee Emerging Artistic Technology Lab (BEATL), the event will focus on the impact of AI on music and creativity, with professor and former AES president Jonathan Wyner joining the labs leadership team.

January 13, 2026

By

Nick Balkin

The Berklee Emerging Artistic Technology Lab (BEATL) will present AIMS (AI Music Summit), a three-day event exploring how artificial intelligence is reshaping music creation, production, performance, and learning. Taking place June 3-5, 2026, on Berklee's Boston campus, the summit will convene musicians, educators, researchers, technologists, and industry leaders to explore how AI is entering everyday creative practice, with an emphasis on real workflows, artist impact, and the ethical questions shaping the future of creative work.

Programming details, featured guests, and a call for submissions will be announced in the coming weeks, with keynote speakers and artists revealed on a rolling basis. To receive updates, sign up for the BEATL newsletter, and for registration information, visit the AIMS website.

Building on Berklee's recent leadership in this space, including its 2024 symposium AI and the Musician, the summit reflects a growing need for clarity and community amid rapid technological change. As AI tools move quickly from experimental to commonplace, Berklee faculty and students are already integrating them into composition, production, performance, and pedagogy, while also grappling with their creative, legal, and economic implications.

AIMS is about centering musicians and educators in this moment of change, says Mark Ethier, BEATL's executive director. It's an opportunity to support artists as active participants in shaping how these tools are built, taught, and used, grounded in real musical practice rather than hype or fear.

Jonathan Wyner

The AIMS announcement follows a leadership expansion at BEATL with longtime Berklee professor and former Audio Engineering Society president Jonathan Wyner joining the lab's leadership team as head of artistic technology initiatives. In the role, Wyner will help guide BEATL's creative, educational, and research priorities as it deepens its focus on artist-centered approaches to emerging technologies.

Wyner brings more than three decades of experience at the intersection of music, engineering, education, and product design. In addition to his role at Berklee, he is chief engineer at M Works Studios in Somerville, Massachusetts, and a former education director at iZotope. He views the role as a way to keep questions of craft, authorship, and musical practice central as AI and emerging creative technologies evolve.

This moment feels different in speed and scope, and it raises real questions for musicians and the audio community: creative identity, trust, bias, and the economics of music-making, Wyner says. BEATL exists to meet those questions with an open-minded and disciplined attitude, while embracing experimentation and joy.

BEATL launched in 2025 to support next-generation creator tools, AI and machine learning, immersive and interactive experience design, and new interfaces for music creation. AIMS represents BEATL's first major public convening and a cornerstone of its mission to place artists at the center of technological change. To learn more about the lab, visit berklee.edu/beatl.

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Berklee Launches AIMS, an Artist-Centered Summit on Music and AI Hosted by the Berklee Emerging Artistic Technology Lab (BEATL), the event will focus on the impact of AI on music and creativity, with professor and former AES president Jonathan Wyner joining the labs leadership team.

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