[hbn]

Like most of this stuff, it's obviously impressive technology compared to what existed a few years ago. But the end product has zero artistic value. It's a grey goo of the average of every concept picked up from the concept of the song.

A talented creative with a vision could make something more interesting and enjoyable in an afternoon with a $0 budget.

[scrollop]

As much as I don't want jobs taken away by AI, 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 "

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.

[spaqin]

Art isn't just the screenplay, or a prompt; it's the clash between reality and the intent (whether a location or practical set constraints), the individual skill of everyone involved, costume and prop department. And it may change during production. And effort. If it's easy, it's easily reproducible and not worth that much. And novelty, that's something current models aren't capable of. That's why Jarimoquai's Virtual Insanity video became popular. That's why practical effects are more impressive than CGI, even if they're jankier and hide behind clever camerawork.

[59percentmore]

If you've ever tried to get around Gemini or ChatGPT's guardrails, stock footage poisoning, and just general tendency to produce the most frustratingly banal version of your prompt possible, then you would understand that prompting AI images and video absolutely already involves a clash between reality and intent (in the sense that this is Google and OpenAI's world, we're just living in it).

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.

[ryandrake]

> If you've ever tried to get around Gemini or ChatGPT's guardrails, stock footage poisoning

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."

[59percentmore]

So, would you agree that working creatively around the Disney-fied locking-down of those tools in order to produce something "provocative, uncomfortable, taboo, explicit, subversive, or challenging of norms" would at least begin to approach being a process that involved at least a semblance of artistic merit?

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).

[59percentmore]

Note that he simply downvoted me. I refuse to believe that it's because equisapiens no longer shock.

[perching_aix]

A notable chunk of criticism GenAI receives has to do with output irreproducibility and semantic instability relative to the input, so this is a bit entertaining to read.

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.

[timacles]

Yeah one thing people aren’t really grasping with a generative AI is that it fundamentally can’t produce the same thing twice. You can’t really create top notch art with all kinds of inconsistencies

[perching_aix]

Not fundamentally, no. It is entirely possible to keep putting in the same thing, and then getting out the same thing. To be honest, it's outright frustrating that this feature is so often neglected.

[simianwords]

I think you are making the same mistake as everyone else with respect to art.

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.

[therouwboat]

I don't think that was fair comparison, earlier comment was that creative person can make million dollar art without having million dollar budget, then again creative person can splash paint on canvas while being dead drunk and make most valuable painting.

Most people find it more impressive if you learn to play Dream theater song on guitar than if you program it in daw.

[gilleain]

I partly agree with you - I used to think of mechanical difficulty as a kind of 'proof of work' for art. Nowadays I am less interested in the idea of what counts as art or not.

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.

[simianwords]

I’m curious to understand why you think drawing photorealistic eyes is different from a person beating a Guitar Hero time record.

Both are pushing boundaries in mechanical dexterity. Yet one is considered art and another is not.

[gilleain]

If I was feeling unfair I would say there is no difference! However, if a friend drew me an eye on A3 paper would I frame it? Probably yes...

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.

[jcelerier]

> it's the clash between reality and the intent (whether a location or practical set constraints), the individual skill of everyone involved, costume and prop department

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

[neonstatic]

> Art isn't just the screenplay, or a prompt; it's the clash between reality and the intent

Okay, clanker

[dr_kiszonka]

I find video models very hard to steer. They can output amazing "shiny" things quickly, but if you want something very specific, you may need to spend days on it. It is not like sitting down with an artist and seeing how they make the exact changes you need in real time while also ensuring artistic cohesion.

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.

[watwut]

This is not about jobs taken away by AI. There are not that many jobs for artists to begin with. And OP was not talking about a job.

> 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.

[doug_durham]

Most of the discussions I've read about AI is as a tool. There is a narrative being created that its all about replacing humans. I've not seen that outside of a view influencers.

[ericmcer]

The prompts would more be like: "The dancing and lip movement is still wildly out of time with the music"... "Ok now the dancing is even more out of sync with the beat"

[throwforfeds]

Sure, but it appears as if the LLM just doesn't understand dancing and rhythm. I don't know why, but an old music video by the band Jungle came to mind -- just a kid dancing, and while it definitely cost more than $100 I'm sure, it couldn't have been all that expensive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JkDzNOgO3U

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

[camillomiller]

Have you ever experienced real artistic process? Because each and every comment from -presumedly- tech people that follow along these lines above is inevitably proof that the author does not grok creative processes at all, and they assume it’s just another algorithmic endeavor, or a collation of serial inputs. This mentality is awful.

[geraldmcboing]

well said.

[qnleigh]

I would really love to see examples of creatives using modern AI/LLMs to make quality art, and it feels like this should be happening, but I can't think of any examples yet. Maybe there's so much low-effort slop that the good works are lost in the noise. Or maybe most artists don't use AI on principle.

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.

[ChrisGreenHeur]

When it happens they won’t tell you about it

[fragmede]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm9codc_zwk is my pick, but it's not for everybody.

[peab]

Look at this one: https://x.com/Zahri_10i/status/2078211494349537447?s=20

[neuralhawke]

Look up a Kenneth Anger or Maya Deren film.

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.

[doug_durham]

I don't think you can make the absolute statement that there is no audience or market for these tools. I enjoyed watching all of these videos. They are far from banal crap. They are deranged. They are not intentionally deranged, it is limitation of the tool. If a video artist were to employ these tools not to save effort, but instead to create an aesthetic it would be proper and good use. Just like non-AI video editors or color grading tools.

[userbinator]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M9r6PZPaIo (slightly NSFW)

[js8]

I have enjoyed Craft (1979). Artistically might be dubious, it's a sort of genre/style parody but I think writing is better than the actual Minecraft movie.

[onemoresoop]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=zX-e9LRR_ko&list=PLF-4qeBB9YHk-P...

[ndriscoll]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=PlfOoKTFcAE seems pretty good to me?

[delusional]

I don't agree, but this is exactly why AI is the technology of this century. We will never be able to agree, because we have no common ground.

I think it's pointless dribble. There's no punchline that it's working towards other than "pigeon dumb"

[Marha01]

> I would really love to see examples of creatives using modern AI/LLMs to make quality art

Look up "The Chronicles of Bone". It's pretty good.

[peab]

I've seen a few that have been shared - I'll link them here if I can find them.

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.

[chhxdjsj]

The suno produced AI world cup country songs were far more exciting and viral than any of the “real” slop produced by the event

https://youtube.com/shorts/xWziEfQxkyo?si=UEzIzVeUUFXEZvCS

[marysol5]

They really slap for Social Media, but not real life.

[flir]

Take a look at this: https://www.youtube.com/@Gossip.Goblin

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.

[camillomiller]

It just does not feel original, or novel, or actually weird. I dunno it’s impressive but… so empty?

[flir]

I think its feet stand more in written SF than filmed SF - I haven't seen anything quite like it in film, but I can point to books that seem to have influenced it. In that respect, I think it's novel. I agree with the emptiness comment. Maybe it's empty because it's so relentlessly shiny - there's not much "tonal variation".

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.

[easyThrowaway]

It won't happen for the intrisc nature of (current-gen, at least) AI of being forced within the limits of their training, which deprives the artist of intent - that is, specifically the ability of questioning in some way what came before him.

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.

[danielbln]

> AI of being forced within the limits of their training

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.

[aprilthird2021]

You're kinda right but it's exactly the ease of generation and the lack of time and money spent which makes people value AI output less.

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

[dhosek]

There was an interesting recent 99% invisible episode about the creation of videos for Karaoke in the 90s, which talked about videos created on very low budgets for songs with tight constraints. Even adjusting for inflation, their budgets would be well below a million dollars by today’s standards (and some costs would likely be lower thanks to digital video removing the cost of purchasing and processing film stock and making editing cheaper).

[wvh]

A lot of iconic scenes were at the discretion of the actors in those scenes. One wonders how much personality and complexity you can really get without the skills and idiosyncrasies of everybody in front of and behind the cameras on a real movie set.

My point being there's a lot more complexity in not producing slop than it seems.

[cryo32]

It's much simpler than that.

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.

[lelanthran]

> 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"

No need to even be so detailed: "Make this an ancient egypt theme" would probably work.

[smoe]

Interestingly, I enjoyed early GenAI videos much more. All those bizarre, fever dream like experiences from the lack of consistency between frames, where things would morph or pop in and out of existence. They had a certain flair and something truly distinct to the medium. Now it is mostly just this uncanny valley of bringing stock photography to life.

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.

[mapt]

Have you been following Gossip Goblin?

[smoe]

Gossip Goblin, I think, is a great example of what artists with actual working experience can do with AI.

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"

[abc42]

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.

[Cthulhu_]

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.

[tejohnso]

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.

[recursive]

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.

[ThatMedicIsASpy]

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.

[gilleain]

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.

[santiagobasulto]

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

[wvh]

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.

[wat10000]

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?

[toasty228]

> 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

[abc42]

>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".

[simmerup]

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

[abc42]

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

[toasty228]

> can make

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

[natebc]

... 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.

[abc42]

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

[natebc]

No. Not the demos in this article.

[krater23]

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.

[xbmcuser]

A talented creative with a vision can now direct AI to build things that would have otherwise cost millions or been entirely impossible. I don’t understand the myopic view people have when it comes to this technology. Just three or four years ago, we saw the exact same skepticism with programming. People insisted it can't do this and it can't do that, but many of those things are possible today.

[arrrg]

This tech isn’t steerable enough when it comes to creative output.

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.

[isqueiros]

This is exactly my vision. I can barely get AI to output my code how I want it to after hours of planning and refining.

If you think you can be "specific" enough for AI to match your "creative vision", then maybe you're not really creative.

[xbmcuser]

Yes today but the statements coming out of people are like as if the tech is static and not changing everyday. It was the same for programming it can't do this it can't do that till it is able to now.

[geraldmcboing]

You are describing false equivalency. There is a fundamental flaw to LLMs. The data is not weighted. Thats why it cant be reliably directed.

[geraldmcboing]

But there is no evidence of this - its is your hypothetical reckons. If a "talented creative" wanted realism, they can already access it and in a reliable, repeatable, direct-able way using all of their lived experience. Your idea of 'directing AI' just shows you haver never directed a human actor, or collaborated with a talented DOP etc. All you describe is an unreliable shortcut to shiny blandness and call anyone who points out your massive blindspot 'myopic'. It would appear it is you who is profoundly myopic about the reality of producing creative work of worth.

[defrost]

"can" but generally doesn't .. and the rare gold is buried in a mountain of bland crap and outright propaganda, state level and crank level.

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.

[zeofig]

It remains godawful slop in every instance I've seen, no matter how expensive it would be to produce without AI.

[starshadowx2]

I think this new one made with Seedance 2.5 is actually not too bad.

https://x.com/BytePlusGlobal/status/2077321849806234080

[lotsofpulp]

Needs more cuts.

[marknutter]

I saw nothing wrong with the number of cuts, seems very in line with other commercials like this. I would not have been able to tell this was made by ai had I not known it going into it.

[lotsofpulp]

I don’t watch commercials to know what is typical, but I just have experience that video media with lots of cuts is generally low quality and a sign to turn it off.

[geraldmcboing]

its out of sync such that it would fail a basic QC by any reputable post house. And it looks like digital slop.

[qnleigh]

Art is kind of unique though, because it inherits a lot of it's value from scarcity, both of the art itself and of the rare talent that can make quality art. If an artistic style or product becomes too common, it tends to lose its luster.

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.

[tejohnso]

> A talented creative with a vision could make something more interesting and enjoyable in an afternoon

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".

[raxxorraxor]

We all know that tasteless junk media would never be successful, this is why you only find high quality media on the internet and only high quality media gets popular in the mainstream. That sounds right, right?

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.

[intrikate]

> 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.

[Arubis]

We’re all tasteless and unrefined morons for something. You enjoy art and have developed a sense of taste, and that’s valuable and valid, and I would assume brings a lot of depth and meaning to your life. Could you differentiate mass-market vs lovingly handmade beef jerky? Or do you want to spend the time researching the precise-to-certainty best vacuum cleaner (ha, did that subconsciously) for your specific apartment, average particulate size and volume and texture?

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.

[contagiousflow]

And do you think that makes the world a better place?

[armanj]

the moment debate becomes philosophical it's over

[achalxyz]

What does making the world a better place mean?

How do you define “a better place”?

[functionmouse]

> And if you don't think this is half decent, just replace "now" with "soon".

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.

[DaiPlusPlus]

Yes, and it has me genuinely concerned.

[f6v]

> It's a grey goo of the average of every concept picked up from the concept of the song.

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.

[kriro]

This seems overly pessimistic to me. Of the recent shows I have watched, Andor contradicts it in my opinion. Might even be one of the best shows I have watched. Granted I rarely watch movies/TV shows these days so my random sample might just be lucky.

[8note]

andor is without doubt, the exception that proves the rule and you know, was not renewed because it was so expensive to make

andor is exceptional

[wat10000]

Guess what, I don't like or watch those either.

[Jtarii]

No one is denying that AI can generate worthless slop, just how most of what humans generate is worthless slop.

[vintermann]

We don't yet know the "load bearing" or "delve" or "not X. Not Y. Just..." Clichés of video AI - at least I don't know. But given it's instruction tuned, we can be confident they will be there, and that the breadth of what it can generate for a given prompt will have extremely low diversity compared to its training data.

[DanHulton]

One of the big dead giveaways for AI videos is the sequence of slow pan shots without any sort of real action or focus. Once you start seeing it in a few of them, you'll start seeing it in _all_ of them. Just shot after shot of a slow pan of a scene with minimal action happening in only a few areas.

[sporkland]

People keep referring to the output of neural nets as the "average of the training data" but imho the deep value in neural nets and the interesting philosophical part is they are massive conditional probability engines whose results can change based on the variables you feed in.

[jstummbillig]

> A talented creative with a vision could make something more interesting and enjoyable in an afternoon with a $0 budget.

Only if you are really sloppy with your book keeping.

[calgoo]

I think these videos are a great visual representation of what happens to your codebase of you let the agent vibe code the entire thing by itself without review and guidance!

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.

[nonethewiser]

>I think these videos are a great visual representation of what happens to your codebase of you let the agent vibe code the entire thing by itself without review and guidance!

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.

[etempleton]

Completely agree. Impressive as a tech demo, but that is pretty much where it ends. Give a talented kid an iPhone and they could create something significantly better and more interesting.

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.

[karlkloss]

"It's a grey goo of the average of every concept picked up from the concept of the song."

You just described 90% of todays music videos made by humans.

[arrrg]

Even the worst music videos I have seen aren’t as incoherent as this mess.

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.

[hliyan]

I remember an Apple ad from a while back where a hydraulic press crushes a bunch of musical instruments. Your "grey goo of the average" analogy resonates for me because these videos feel like what would ooze out if we take all relevant videos that were produced by humans and then crush them under a generative press.

[throwawaytea]

It was made with zero artistic intent, so it has zero value. If you sat down a talented art student that cared, they could prompt AI to make something artistically interesting to watch.

[basisword]

You can find someone on Fiverr that’ll do a better job than this for $100. The concept will be completely different but it’ll be much better.

[lostmsu]

$100 for a video on Fiverr?

[basisword]

It's basically a freelancer website at this point. The original concept is long dead.

[lostmsu]

I was questioning price range really

[nekooooo]

remembering that line from the Portlandia sketch where the PTA is discussing the music their kids are listening to with the subtext that it's not indie enough :

"It is pap. It is pabulum." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdEPgB2yizw

[mirsadm]

Yes but they would have had to spend years training/practicing which apparently is not a thing we value anymore.

[Spacecosmonaut]

I wonder how much of the sloppy feeling is created by the knowledge that its AI generated.

[DrammBA]

I wish I could see it with fresh eyes without the accumulated knowledge I have of how AI looks. What does this video look like to a person clueless about AI?

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?

[tejohnso]

Same. I think there's a lot of AI prejudice influencing people's opinions on AI output.

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.

[userbinator]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48137126

[MPSimmons]

Yeah, a $100 AI music video is materially worse than not having a music video.

[websap]

The scary thing is that this is the worst this technology will ever be.

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

[jvorick]

Movie tickets won't skyrocket. The price to make content will only go down. Best case, creators will be able to make better movies w/ a fraction of the $$ (faster iteration on concepts, cheaper CGI, no need to hire extras, etc). Worst case, movie makers don't find AI useful and ticket prices stay the same.

[userbinator]

cheaper CGI

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.

[bmau5]

Wouldn't it track that AI creative work would plummet ticket costs rather than increase them?

[zahlman]

The industry may be cooked, but the economic effect you predict is entirely illogical. Things don't get more expensive simply because other things get cheaper.

[sigsop7]

> 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.

[theplumber]

The hooks are more important than the quality. The whole short video stuff is designed to be filled by AI slop.

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)

[maxehmookau]

A lot of the replies to this are, predicably, disappointing. For what its worth, I entirely agree.

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.

[gpderetta]

"90% of everything is crap".

Although I guess we should probably update it to "99% of everything is slop.

[nonethewiser]

>But the end product has zero artistic value

It has more artistic value than most modern art.

[onesandofgrain]

We dont need music videos though. Music videos are absurd and meaningless.

[jakemm]

I don't know if there is a hidden /s but I disagree with your general statement. Music Videos often enough expand the story the song tells.

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.

[1] https://youtu.be/54fea7wuV6s

[onesandofgrain]

They do not, they add nothing. And if they do then the song is bad.

[AIorNot]

Ah man I love the music videos of the 90s

Spike Jonze had so many creative ones

[johnvanommen]

That was Morrissey's stance when he was in the Smiths.

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.")

[Mashimo]

Why are they absurd and meaningless?

Can be art and creative, just like the music.

[onesandofgrain]

Music videos take attention away from the actual art. It's purely a gimmick to make bad music sound better. ... and no, music videos are not art.

[brabel]

Your definition of art is not in agreement with any artist’s interpretation I’ve ever heard. It’s like saying a movie based on a book is not art , it just distracts from the book.

[onesandofgrain]

I don't care about being in agreement with "any artist's interpretation". And stop appealing to the masses argument, it's cringe.

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.

[flohofwoe]

> 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

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".

[Mashimo]

> music videos are not art.

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.

[galaxyLogic]

I think it's the same situation and direction with human dancers on every pop-music stage. They add nothing to the music so why are they there? It used to be that musicians focused on great playing and singers on great singing, but now every pop-star and also rap-star must have their dancers on stage. I personally don't get it but seems like many people like it more if there are more dancers.

[onesandofgrain]

Exactly, they add nothing. It's a cringey gimmick. The music is the art.

[__alexs]

I'm sure some people said the same about ballet.

[onesandofgrain]

Ballet isn't art, it's wasted potential.

[bloqs]

Music videos aren't absurd and meaningless, as in many instances they are of fantastic artistic merit on their own accord and are simply scored in reverse

[TheOtherHobbes]

They're often a collection of meaningless visual cliches spliced together in an attempt to look meaningful, and always have been.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsgWUq0fdKk

[onesandofgrain]

Agreed