Even as some visual artists try to fight back in court against corporations that practice generative AI, other mainstream artists are quickly embracing the technology and using it to create recent projects in their very own style.
A typical example: Earlier this week, pop star The Weeknd, real name Abel Tesfaye, revealed a brand new teaser trailer for a YouTube livestream of his upcoming September 7 concert in São Paulo, Brazil, created using an inventory of cutting-edge generative AI tools.
According to the trailer credits on YouTube, the video was shot by a Spanish visual artist Yza Vokucreated using a mixture of still images generated by Midjourney and animations from Runways Gen-3, Lumas Dream Machine, and Google's Veo AI video generator – the latter of which is currently invite-only and only accessible to a small group of developers handpicked by the search giant.
The video's visuals are in The Weeknd's signature, yet highly phantasmagoric, neon-gothic and dark disco style, with monstrous faces, masks, fire, lightning, shadowy figures with burning heads, a automotive sinking underwater and a figure wading into it, a gross neon-colored grave, robed occultists with hands reaching up from hell, sparse trees, screaming visages, temples, and his own head making a temporary appearance.
The Weeknd shared the AI-generated trailer on his various social media accounts, constructing anticipation for the livestream.
On Xhe urged his fans to “feast their eyes,” emphasizing the unique visuals that set the tone for the upcoming performance.
Voku too expressed gratitude on Instagram and thanked The Weeknd and XO Records co-founder Lamar C. Taylor.
On LinkedIn, Matthieu Lorrain, Creative Lead at Google DeepMind confirmed that the corporate helped create the video and called it “one other exciting collaboration for our team as we proceed to explore recent creative territories with generative media.”
While it's unclear whether generative AI will play a task within the livestream itself, the trailer shows the potential of those tools in creative media.
The teaser has already caught the eye of fans and tech enthusiasts alike, who’re excited to see how the complete performance will unfold.
The recent AI trailer follows an AI-generated music video for the band Washed Out (featuring OpenAI's Sora) in addition to music videos for Ye (formerly Kanye West's) Vultures, also created with Midjourney and Runway. In addition Madonna's concert visuals and a Music film for Jared Leto's band 30 Seconds to Mars have also used AI tools.
So, while a vocal group of artists are unhappy with artificial intelligence and are taking it to court for allegedly infringing copyright by training on their past works without permission or compensation, other hugely popular acts are seeing the good thing about the technology and releasing recent projects which have used it – despite, or maybe even due to, its controversial popularity.
