A talented creative with a vision could make something more interesting and enjoyable in an afternoon with a $0 budget.
eg. "scene 32, same 2 characters from the previous scene, now dressed in the garb of Egyption middle kingdom high priests, though with cat faces, dancing on the back of an elephant that is running fast with blurred feet on the surface of a river with licks of water that burst from the water in time with the music that I gave you before, length of song for this clip 2:21 to 2:31"
Your mind is your limit. AI is a tool. If you tell it "create me a music video for this song set in egypt" then it may turn out AI sloppy.
Art has nothing to do with _mechanical_ difficulty. I see this misconception all the time. Examples
- Kumail Nanjiani roided up for his next movie. This has mechanical difficulty, sure. But what does it add to the artistic element?
- Dream Theatre guitarists play olympics with their guitar and play solo's that are mechanically impossible for normal people. Yet we still find Beatles have more artistic value, why?
I hope this popular misconception will die down. I don't want mechanical difficulty in art being praised. I feel these are things people hold on to because mechanical difficulty has some moat and people don't want to give it up.
However, consider works like photorealistic drawings of eyes (usually at a very large scale). A lot of people like these, and consider them to be fine art, while others (art critics?) consider them bland. Contrast that with a Picasso flamingo drawn with a single line.
There is artistic value in high-effort, low concept works as well as low-'effort', high-concept works and other combinations. Perhaps what we are all looking for is effort of some kind (I prefer human effort) whether that is conceptual effort or practice in drawing lines on paper.
Both are pushing boundaries in mechanical dexterity. Yet one is considered art and another is not.
Others have said this better, but art is an qualitative/emotional thing, not a simply measurable quantity of an object. We tend to use the effort put in as a proxy measure for quality, but when photocopiers and 3D printers and - yes - genAI get involved, that becomes harder or impossible.
Beating Guitar Hero is emotional, but not artistic. Photorealistic drawings could be emotional, and may or may not be artistic. Putting a text prompt into a generative model to make a (frankly terrible) music video for $100 is ... something else.
Beating Guitar Hero could artistic. I don't even know how, but I'm sure some artist could beat Guitar Hero in a way that was somehow artistic.
This terrible $100 music video which I'm not even going to watch, is surely not art. Also I'm totally sure some person is going to spend $100 with an AI and make art. It's very hard, but they day will come. The slop-to-art ratio will be astronomical.
Most people find it more impressive if you learn to play Dream theater song on guitar than if you program it in daw.
Okay, clanker
If there's a way to do something better and worse, then one can absolutely talk about added and absent value. I browse AI generated images a ton, and the difference between beginner / low effort submissions and high effort / advanced submissions is very stark.
That's not art, that's the limitations that everyone working in this industry have been working night and day to overcome for hundreds of years
I would love to get around the "individual skill" part, but all of my artist friends would excommunicate me if they knew the AI projects I've been working on, let alone if I asked them to collaborate.
Art is (often) provocative, uncomfortable, taboo, explicit, subversive, or challenging of norms. You're never going to get that out of increasingly locked-down and Disney-fied BigTech hosted LLMs obsessed with "AI safety."
Because I can assure you that much of what I've gen'd checks those boxes (unless Sorry To Bother You's third-act twist no longer unsettles).
I would love to see examples if anyone has any. I saw a few things on r/AIVideos that I sort of liked, but I wouldn't go as far as to call them quality art.
He (they?) have a vision, and are trying to get it on the screen via AI tools. I don't think the tools are quite there yet, so I wouldn't call it "quality art", but I think it shows the direction of travel, and it shows somebody trying to use those tools to say something (ironically, the message is that the tools are kinda bad news).
I'm reminded of the tipping point when a generation of bedroom producers got tools "good enough" that they didn't need studio time any more. We got some creative music and a lot of slop out of that change. But hey, 80% of everything is crap, so it shouldn't be a surprise.
But I do think it's a harbinger of things to come: bedroom auteurs with new tools (although they'll be surfing an absolute tidal wave of slop). The tools are going to get better; early synthesizers were pretty primitive.
You probably won't be impressed and these are legendary figures in experimental film making either.
There is no audience or market for what these tools would be good for.
These videos in the examples are laughable uncreative trash to me but so are big budget super hero human slop.
The main constraint with AI art is that I think the models have been overfit to a very narrow range of visual expression. Midjourney in 2023 could produce the absolute most fucked up images I have ever seen and I have seen a lot of fucked up visual art. That has all been washed out of the model at this point towards a statistical average of what people think is "beautiful".
Also no nudity allowed. What we have is nothing like a model trained to output the sensibility of Hieronymus Bosch or Francis Bacon with nudity. We have literally the opposite of that.
It is the difference between an artist and a "creative". These models are for "creatives", the conformist corporate bullshit version of the artist.
Instead of Hieronymus Bosch we have the statistical average infinite pretty portraits of the virgin mary because we are good people and good corporate citizens.
The point of art isn't "I made it pretty so it has value now", it's "This is how I see the world, am I the only one who feels this way?".
And yes, this is valid even for absolute jerks who couldn't care less about that the other people were thinking at the time, Like Lou Reed for example. The questions in his music were rhetorical and directed at himself in that case. Unfortunately, as Pablo Picasso said, for this computers (or AIs, in this case) are useless. They can only give you answers.
AI doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's the sum of training, inputs and outputs. If I give it novel inputs, the outputs won't be solely within the limits of their training. If I use it as part of a pipeline, the end result of the pipeline too won't be forced within the limits of AI training.
Look up "The Chronicles of Bone". It's pretty good.
I think it's pointless dribble. There's no punchline that it's working towards other than "pigeon dumb"
I think right now most people here and on twitter have no taste, and post slop that were just sort of one shotted.
But there are people using these tools in a sort of hybrid way, which I think has incredible potential. You can use it to do CGI on existing footage, in a way that's orders of magnitudes faster and cheaper than current CGI methods.
I also think that the most viable models will be video-to-video, and audio-to-audio.
If you've read A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, I think you might get what I'm saying. But essentially, you can capture a lot of emotion, expression, etc, using a cheap camera and a single actor, and then use AI to "stylize" it in a really cheap effective way, while keeping the emotion/expression. Adding lighting for example, upscaling the quality, changing the voice timbre while keeping the pacing, etc.
> Your mind is your limit. AI is a tool.
Then the companies should start talking about them the same way as they talk about tools. Because when they are pushing for artists replacement by AI, they are not talking about tools. They are trying to make AI into a person while very intentionally devaluing things people actually like.
> a creative person with a vision that would usually required $1 million budget, could create such a video using AI by being very specific in what they require which would not be a " grey goo of the average of every concept "
How many $1 million budget music videos you look at? The sold vision of AI is to not be the tool you are talking about here. Yes, there is an alternative reality where these companies tried to make tools for artists, but it is not a reality we live in.
If you can't afford a video then don't make one. A slop video for $100 will devalue your entire brand. People will question your music.
There's a lot more value in just cutting some live performance videos together cheaply.
No need to even be so detailed: "Make this an ancient egypt theme" would probably work.
My point being there's a lot more complexity in not producing slop than it seems.
A fake Gauguin painting and a real one can be almost indistinguishable to the human eye. But only one is worth the big bucks. Everyone scoffs at the other (once told which is real and which is fake). Something similar might happen to AI where the requirement to disclose it becomes a signal that the creator has cheapened out
Edit: oh I remembered another, The Blaze said their first music video cost them $100 to make: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UivZrL2znh0 and their follow up didn't cost a whole lot more they've also been on record saying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54fea7wuV6s
AI is obviously very useful, but perhaps not in the way people think. Two aspects I would like to see improved are instruction following and providing relevant feedback.
Obviously, there will be some who use AI to great artistic effect, but I'm really worried about the discoverability of actually interesting stuff, whether it uses AI or not. Everything will be swamped by the automated goo of mediocrity that will vastly dominate in volume.
My perhaps naive hope is that this pushes people back toward offline and local communities, as well as toward more physical art instead of even more consumerism.
That said, for my taste, his works, while visually beautiful and interesting, feel a bit collage-y and lacking in emotion. The over the top visuals distract from a lack of depth. Sound design is very meh.
As I said, I think there are and will be many artists using AI in great and novel ways. It’s just that so far I have seen many more grifters than artists.
I’m not yet convinced that AI will bring us the next Masamune Shirow, Katsuhiro Otomo, Moebius, H.R. Giger, or Syd Mead in terms of lasting stylistic impact on the genre without them having to learn some actual skills, rather than just being an “idea person"
How much would it take for me to create videos like this? I'm guessing 1-4 years calendar time practicing half an hour every day just to break my lack of talent. Immeasurable cost given how there's no way in hell I'm going to invest that kind of time for a skill I don't actually want to acquire.
Somebody who's actually competent and talented is going to make some pretty amazing stuff cheaply with something like this, and the technology is nowhere near its peak yet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A_tSyJBsRQ
My point is, anyone can make a music video on any budget or level of talent. And camcorder silliness is more artistic and entertaining than AI generated stuff any day of the week.
https://www.youtube.com/@DementedVinyl
But I have never cared about a video when it comes to music.
'Sabotage' by the Beastie Boys (Spike Jones), 'Hunter' by Bjork (Paul White), 'Praise You' by Fatboy Slim (also Spike Jones), ... er Billie Eilish 'When The Party's Over', Apex Twin's Windowlicker (Chris Cunningam). There are so many great music videos that are more than just the song.
Of course, some are just the artist singing in front of a greenscreen, and that's fine I suppose. Still, they are fundamentally different to an excellent music video.
If you like the music, you probably want to feel some connection to the people making that music.
It doesn't matter what it "can" make when what it does make is 99.999% boomer certified slop
But really, nobody said "only" it's just that the gems are drowning alongside us in a sea of bullshit and the tide is still on the way up I'm afraid.
Why? What's its value? I personally wouldn't watch a video/movie/show that's entirely clanker generated, I see no point in it.
All AI fanatics can talk about is cost, productivity, money, efficiency, ... no wonder they can't understand art or even basic human emotions
That's an incredibly myopic way of thinking about other people. Sort of ironic when you imply that you're better at "basic human emotions".
If the input was a few sentences, an hour of waiting, and $50, why should I value the result any more highly than Excavatorhenge?
Maybe there are some nooks and crannies where this tech can be employed and actually save time/budget. Maybe. But what does not work is to just take the output and use it. There is nowhere near enough precision there.
If you think you can be "specific" enough for AI to match your "creative vision", then maybe you're not really creative.
I have no objection to the potential vision you espouse, I have zero love for the actual ground level reality of the tsunami of AI slop videos being pumped out ATM - many are skewed toward trust building in a probable long con game of deceit or nation swaying, others are just ick.
An app is still useful even when it's cheap for anyone to make it. But art that anyone can make for cheap becomes, by definition, slop.
I should hope that a "talented" creative "with a vision" could, do better, yes. But now a talentless hack devoid of vision can do something half decent too. And if you don't think this is half decent, just replace "now" with "soon".
How do you define “a better place”?
Seriously, the nudge for artistic value can be made, although I would very much doubt a creative human making a video for an established song with a clear theme would do better in creativity. Perhaps the one advantage a human would have is to reject the expectations for such a tasks, which the AI is trained to fulfil.
The problem isn't that such content lacks artistic value. It is that it is enough for the broadest audience. The average consumer is basically a vacuum cleaner.
Yeah, this has been the hardest pill to swallow, as a creative and person that enjoys art. They know it's all least-common-denominator bullshit and they like it anyway. A lot of people truly just don't care about the meaning or any message in the art, they just like explosions and pretty people.
And that's fine, I guess. There's nothing wrong with it. It just... makes me feel a little empty inside.
I’m really trying not to make a value judgment here—tbh I also care a lot more about artistic integrity (in the arts I’m in a place to understand and judge, anyway) than beef jerky. Just landing on: the mass market is there to satisfy the majority of people that don’t deeply care about the particular slice that the mass market serves, because we’re all mortal and can’t be arsed to refine our tastes and decisions on everything.
see, you keep saying that, but it never comes true. First of all, you suggest that just because progress has been fast up to now, it will continue being fast. I think that's something like Gambler's fallacy. Secondly, the progress we're seeing is not like linear progress to 100%. It continues to get certain things extremely wrong. This might be half decent today for fooling the elderly, but it's not a good look for artistic expression or even marketing for that matter.
All right, but that's what an average entertainment product looks like. All these new TV shows have exactly the same look and feel about them. The same actors playing the same roles over and over again.
People keep comparing AI to some kind of once in a lifetime genius instead of an average person in the field.
andor is exceptional
Only if you are really sloppy with your book keeping.
It works... but once you actually start looking at the details there are so many small cases that need fixing.
Now, if you had someone with experience in editing, and they worked as a team, human + agent, then most of the small issues would be picked up and fixed during development.
I think you are right if the codebase has no tests.
Thats the thing about producing art. Its subjectively consumed. Is it good or bad? You can’t really verify that during generation.
You largely can with code.
And this is the bear case on AI. Sure, if the quality of the output is largely meaningless or binary, e.g. it works or it doesn’t, then AI is useful, but as soon as subjective judgement or taste is involved it is useless.
You just described 90% of todays music videos made by humans.
This is actually mostly down to constraints: even if you suck you will suck in some coherent consistent way that will give your music videos more structure than this mess.
Those videos are just nihilistic despair.
"It is pap. It is pabulum." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdEPgB2yizw
I wonder what would happen in a study where some art is critiqued by one group that is informed that the art was created by AI and another group that is uninformed.
What do they think of the constant repetition of slow panning shows where barely anything is happening, or a guy spinning on the floor but his head morphs into his feet and his feet morph into his head, or a person kissing a mirror that isn't quite mirroring the person and it slowly becomes a person kissing what appears to be their identical twin standing on the other side a floating empty mirror frame?
The media industry is cooked.
Get ready for $100 movie theater tickets, because the cost actual creative work is going to go sky high in the next few years
I suspect movie theaters will just die. Even nowadays, on the occasion I go to see a movie, I damn near gave the entire theater to myself. Given the output from Hollywood is already abysmal, I can’t imagine paying $100 for it even if the alternative is AI slop.
Worth noting that the weird artifacts and morphing transitions that seem to be "free" and perhaps too abundant in AI videos would've probably been impossible or extremely difficult to create otherwise.
Even the long video format (I.e movies) are in big trouble due AI because the cheap/junk stuff they produce (I.e Netflix style ) will be easily produced with AI.
Not to mention that people will have the option to no longer subject themselves to the lecturing of various political crap that is being delivered through the big media producers(I.e Netflix)
AI is good at a lot of things, but it genuinely sucks at anything that requires real creativity. The human at the heart of a creative endeavor can't be replaced, and I hope that never changes.
Although I guess we should probably update it to "99% of everything is slop.
It has more artistic value than most modern art.
Spike Jonze had so many creative ones
Can be art and creative, just like the music.
No, a movie based upon a book is the same art just told in a different way, but I'm not buying that rappers driving luxury cars while rapping and having women in stripper heels tells the same musical artistic story in a different way. Or some random story.
Lol ok that's where you're coming from. Reducing music videos to gangster rap shite is basically the equivalent of "all movies suck because I've ever only seen Hollywood superhero movies".
Yes, they definitely are. I mean not all, but they can be. Just like cover photos on an LP or the music itself.
It might not do anything to you, but it's definitely art that can compliment the video. Might make it worse, might make it better. Might change the feeling.
While "The Blaze - TERRITORY" is already a beautiful song to me, its music video[1] Always brings a tear to my eye.
That said, music Videos, like many songs themselves, are not rarely meaningless and bland. I guess that is just the result of commercial music.
I really wish he hadn't been such a luddite, it would have been great if we had some Smiths music videos that were actually made in the 80s. (OK, we did get one, "Stop Me if You Think That You've Heard This One Before.")