AI in Flat

Flat includes a few features that run on AI, for the tasks that take time without adding much music: typing in a score from paper, making repetitive edits to the score you have open, or finding and converting the scores in your library. This page lists them, what each one does, and what it costs.

AI is always your choice

Flat is built for musicians who write their own music, and that does not change. Every AI feature in Flat is optional:

• Nothing runs unless you start it. The editor, playback and sharing work exactly the same whether you use AI or not. The notation assistant only acts on what you ask, and you connect an external assistant yourself and can disconnect it at any time.
• Flat does not train AI on your scores. Your music stays yours: we do not use your scores or the files you import to train AI models. When you connect your own assistant, its provider's settings decide how it uses your conversations, for example ChatGPT's Improve the model for everyone.
• You stay in charge of your music. AI takes care of tedious tasks, like finding a score in your library or converting notation between formats. What you write, and whether you use AI at all, is up to you.
• You choose which AI features Flat can use. Turn off generative AI, or all AI features, in your account settings. What each option turns off.
• The community stays human. Scores made with generative AI can't be published in the community, which celebrates the music people write themselves. Learn more.

AI features

Scan a PDF or photo

Flat's optical music recognition (OMR) reads a PDF, a scan or a photo of printed sheet music and rebuilds it as a score you can play, edit and transpose.

Scan and import sheet music from a PDF or photo.

Ask the notation assistant

In the editor on the Flat website, the notation assistant answers questions about the score you have open and edits it when you ask in plain words: add dynamics over a passage, transpose a few bars, write a bass line. Every change can be undone in one click. It is part of Flat Power and is not available in Flat for Education.

See what the notation assistant can do.

Quantize a MIDI recording

When you record from a MIDI keyboard with Live MIDI, AI Quantize reads your take and works out the rhythm you meant, which staff each note belongs on and where the bars fall, instead of snapping every note to a fixed grid. It is on-device AI: a small model we trained ourselves runs in your browser or in the Flat app.

How AI Quantize works and how it is trained.

Connect your own AI assistant

If you already use ChatGPT, Claude or another assistant, connect it to your Flat account so it can find your scores, read their notation and save new ones. It requires a Flat Power subscription and does not use AI credits.

See what it can do and how to connect it.

AI credits

Features that run in Flat, like scanning and the notation assistant, use AI credits: each Flat Power subscription includes a monthly allowance, and you can buy more. Connecting your own assistant does not use credits. How AI credits work.

Is a score made with AI labeled?

Not visibly. Flat marks these scores internally, only to keep them out of the community, and does not show the mark anywhere at this time. They are not public anyway: they can't be published in the community.

• What gets marked. A score written or edited with the notation assistant, created by an AI app through the Flat connector, or imported from a file made by an AI tool. The mark stays if you delete the AI-written notes yourself: only undoing the change, or restoring a version of the score from before it, removes it. Learn more.
• What doesn't get marked. Music you import from a PDF or photo, and takes read with AI Quantize: the notes are the ones on your page or the ones you played.
• You can see what the assistant did. Your conversations with the notation assistant are saved with the score, and every reply that changed the score has an Undo button. Undo and confirmations.
• A connected AI app creates a new score. It never edits an existing one, so the original stays as you wrote it. What it cannot do.

What comes next

We will add more AI features to Flat, and each one will stay optional. If there is something you would like AI to help you with, tell us with Was this article helpful? at the bottom of this page.