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Comment by abc42 | Hacker News Reader

I'm amazed how easily people dismiss this. They used less that an hour of wall clock time and max $50 to do this.

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.

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That depends on your own standards to be honest. Here's a video from Meshuggah which is a camcorder recording of them emoting in a camper van - that's half an hour of work, a few hours of editing tops.

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.

I'm fine with AI music having AI videos.

https://www.youtube.com/@DementedVinyl

But I have never cared about a video when it comes to music.

A good music track does not _need_ a video, but some videos definitely can enhance the music or are just amazing by themselves.

'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.

Didn't expect to see a MESHUGGAH reference in HN today. Not bad.

This. I generally much rather watch a live video of the band performing the song interspersed with some behind the scene footage than some random badly acted (non-AI) slop video on top of the song.

If you like the music, you probably want to feel some connection to the people making that music.

I found the OP AI videos much more entertaining than this camcorder silliness. It was interesting to see how literal the AI interpreted the lyrics, but then sometimes took the liberty to add clips of synchronized dance moves which actually seemed like a good match for the tempo. And each shot was different and engaging in some way. I tired of watching a bunch of grown men thrash around like idiots in a cramped van after about 5 seconds. How you consider that artistic is beyond me.

Interesting. One of my biggest surprises from all this was that the timing of the dancing seemed significantly wrong. I would have thought that would be one of the easiest things.

It's like using an excavator to arrange a bunch of big stones in a circle and saying it's a new Stonehenge. The excavator is obviously a powerful tool, it took you an hour to do what took the ancients a huge amount of time and effort. But why should anybody care? The stones aren't the actual point of Stonehenge, despite the name. It's the history and meaning.

If the input was a few sentences, an hour of waiting, and $50, why should I value the result any more highly than Excavatorhenge?

> I'm amazed how easily people dismiss this.

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

>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".

Why would you want to make a video like that though, it’s soulless slop

Why would you think that soulless slop is the only thing this technology can make?

> can make

It doesn't matter what it "can" make when what it does make is 99.999% boomer certified slop

... because of the evidence all around us?

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.

Where exactly do you think this evidence is? Don't tell me you're basing this on demos like the one in the article?

No. Not the demos in this article.

I've seen similaer videos in the pre AI time where someone stiches stock fotos together that fit to the lyrics. Absolute shit, and this is the advanced way to do that. It's a costly gimmic for illegal youtube uploads. The videos have no more value than that. So yes, you could do that in half an hour with your current knowledge and 0$, but it would be meaningless still images instead of meaningless video snippets. I see not much difference.

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