That is what I see, as well, with the GENERATING AUDIO USING NEURAL NETWORKS patent application. IANAPL, but I do work in audio software and the application, seems to me, explains a broad model of audio processing using convolutional neural networks (in the claims an input is involved, so I am guessing the title tried to select an even broader set of problems - with & without input).

I think people pointing out that Google defensively files patents may be correct and I hope that's the intention with DeepMind's work, too. I am a fan of the audio work they did with WaveNet since day 1 and was so happy the paper was out for all of us to read. Still, I was hoping I may be able to (read: "daydreaming that I might be capable to") build on it, some day.

Organizations change leadership and they switch focus, too. I believe patents slow-down (even stop) progress and they are quite hypocritical, overall (show me a patented invention that was so unique, the author/owner didn't "stand on the shoulders of" 100's of years of freely available science to derive/discover/invent it and... I will agree for that specific case).