The chillwave musician this week uploaded his first fully AI-generated music video, created by Sora, OpenAI's text-to-video model.
Washed Out's latest song, “The Hardest Part,” was released Thursday and features a four-minute music video about a couple who spend the rest of their lives together, from high school to adulthood. has been completed, and shows scenes hinting at weddings, child-rearing, and the final events with a sense of speed. death.
The video's director, Paul Trillio, said in a statement shared by Washed Out's record label, Sub Pop, that he had wanted to capture this kind of “infinite zoom” concept for 10 years. He said he never tried it because he thought it was too ambitious. .
“I was particularly interested in what makes Sora unique. It offers something that could never be captured with a camera or animated in 3D. could exist only by,” Trillio writes. “The surreal and psychedelic aspects of AI allow us to explore and discover new ideas we never dreamed of.”
Although Sora is not yet publicly available, it can generate up to one minute of video based on ideas entered in a text box. When edited together, these clips can potentially be used to create a full-length project. Since OpenAI announced its ultra-realistic video generation capabilities in February, the technology has sparked a mix of excitement and concern online.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The Hardest Part,” the lead single from Washed Out's upcoming album “Notes From a Quiet Life,” is the longest music video they've made with Sora to date. But the visuals have a dream-like, almost eerie quality to them, which may be intentional, although Trillio writes that trying to recreate reality with artificial intelligence is “boring.” They say it's effective.
“I wasn't interested in capturing realism, I was interested in capturing something that felt surreal. The way different scenes smoothly blend and fuse together is a way of thinking about how we imagine dreams or vague memories. It feels similar to moving through a ,” Torrilio wrote. “Some people feel like this might replace the way we make things, but I think it complements ideas that could never be made any other way.”
Washed Out, whose real name is Ernest Green, also said in a statement shared by Sub Pop that Sora is a fictional couple's story that centers around nostalgia and lost love in a way that he believes only an AI can. He writes that he was able to breathe life into it.
“what [Trillio’s] What comes to mind is nostalgic, sad, uplifting, and often very strange. But he still managed to make the characters feel sympathetic and invested in the journey of how their lives progress,” Green wrote, adding, “In my opinion, Sora's The clip's hallucinatory nature feels like the beginning of a new genre in itself.” It's surreal, unpredictable, and completely unique to traditional film and even animation. ”
some artists online criticized Regarding the use of AI to create videos, they expressed doubts about whether AI helped the videos be more creative or evoke emotions in viewers.
In recent years, an explosion of generative AI technology has permeated the creative industries, allowing internet users around the world to create music, write screenplays and lyrics, and generate visual media with just a few text prompts. The question arises as to how the influx of new tools that allow people to do things will change. It affects the labor of real artists and producers.
Concerns about generative AI were already top of mind for entertainment industry employees during last year's labor strikes. And many musicians continue to seek protections around the use of AI models. Just last month, Drake released his diss track “Taylor Made Freestyle” after Tupac Shakur's estate threatened to sue him for using an AI-generated version of the late rapper's voice. has been deleted from his social media accounts.
Despite a flurry of lawsuits over AI algorithms that learn from the work of human artists without consent or compensation, other players in the technology industry have seen little resistance to the use of the technology, and generative AI They often claim that the accessibility of the tools allows even low-budget artists to pursue it. Bigger project.
Triglio wrote that he remains optimistic about how artists will adapt as AI reveals new technological and creative possibilities.
“This is a glimpse into a future where music artists are given the opportunity to dream bigger,” he wrote. “Overreliance on this technique can become a crutch. It's important to use it as another technique in your tool belt, rather than as a new standard for creation.”