If you don’t know what AI (artificial intelligence) is and you haven’t heard any discussion of it, then you’ve been living under a rock and I’m jealous of you. AI is everywhere and it’s disrupting all sorts of things from companies bragging about their technology being powered by AI to it now being used in art and this is one of the most controversial ones. Can robots make art? How artistic is AI? Is it ethical? Was this contest winner cheating? Is it okay if big companies and A-list rock bands use AI-created art? Well, we just opened a Pandora’s box. I guess it’s time to examine this topic.
Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon 50th Anniversary music video contest
Last year was the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s most famous album The Dark Side of the Moon. Every classic rock fan knows about that album and I’ve talked about it plenty of times on here, mostly the album cover side of things with a book review of a Hipgnosis biography, a review of a book written by Aubrey Powell, and a review of the Hipgnosis documentary, Squaring the Circle.
On Pink Floyd’s website you can find details about this music video competition. To sum it up, a competition was held last year and closed on 31 December 2023. To celebrate this milestone, Pink Floyd held a competition for animators to make music videos representing the 10 tracks of The Dark Side of the Moon. As you know, Pink Floyd are a very visual band and even made music videos long before MTV with some of the oldest ones being from the Syd Barrett era, most of their covers were designed by Hipgnosis, and Gerald Scarfe (Jane Asher’s husband) made the animations for Pink Floyd: The Wall.
So as you can expect, I have some high expectations for this contest. There’s a lot of talented people who have been inspired by Pink Floyd and would love to be given a chance and while there’s definitely some criticisms about rock bands that have band members worth hundreds of millions of dollars basically using this approach of having artists do labour for free by having them submit artwork on spec instead of straight up commissioning an artist after seeing their portfolio. The most optimistic way to view this is that those who aren’t nepo babies have a chance, I suppose. Well, those with the time to make an animation for a contest for free certainly are more likely to be those in a more comfortable, stable position financially, rather than those who have to toil away at their day jobs in order to pay the bills – so yeah money always gives you an advantage. This contest could be a more egalitarian way of finding the best artist for the job… or perhaps not, as we’ll see later.
The contest was judged by a panel of: Anton Corbijn (famous music video director), Alan Yentob (former BBC television executive), Gerald Scarfe, Sarah Smith (director, screenwriter, and animator), Nick Mason (Pink Floyd drummer), Kyle Balda (Minions director), Daisy Jacobs (animator), Harry Pierce (UK chairman, creative director, and partner of graphic design company Pentagram), and Terry Gilliam (Monty Python). Impressive CVs, but let’s see if they had good judgement.
According to the contest rules, the best animation for each song wins a £10,000 cash prize with bonuses of £100,000 for 1st place, £25,000 for second place, and £10,000 for third place. For a novice artist that’s a lot of money, but for those with a lot of experience, I don’t know, especially considering that Pink Floyd are one of the wealthiest rock bands. They could certainly afford to give life changing amounts of money to the winners.
Reading through the contest rules, use of AI is allowed:
“You may use artificial intelligence software or other analogous technology to create your video, provided that you may not use any such software or technology that assumes or obtains (or tries to assume or obtain) any copyright or other rights’ ownership in your video entry and/or which would otherwise be and/or result in a breach of these Terms.”
This is nonsense. AI by definition steals from artists. No way around it. This is a contest that focuses on animation skills and using AI is not a skill related to animation.
The Winners
Over the past week, Pink Floyd have been posting the winners of the contest on their YouTube channel. I particularly liked the ones for “Speak To Me” (I love stop motion and for some reason this made me think of Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared), “On The Run” (I love the references to Animals), and “Brain Damage” (a great tribute to Syd Barrett!). One of these though is not like the others and that would be the one for “Any Colour You Like”, titled “Marble Mannequin”. There’s something off about that one and you can see it below. The thumbnail alone looks like something created by AI not unlike the viral Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory experience in Glasgow. From the looks of this thumbnail… it’s gonna be a disaster. And it was! You can see it for yourself. It has this uncanny valley stable but shaky feel to it. It’s nothing like any animation I’ve watched whether it’s Western animation, Anime, claymation, or something else. I tried watching it while stoned, and that didn’t make it any better. There had to be better entries for “Any Colour You Like” rather than this! This is AI and I’ll elaborate later in this blog post why it’s so bad.
Now you might be like, “Angie, why are you being so harsh? Isn’t that a bold accusation to make?” Except it isn’t. The artist says as much in this accompanying featurette. Each of the winners had a little behind the scenes featurette made where they talk about their creative process (well, not like this winner had much of one). Here’s the video and a direct quote from it:
“The technique that I used for my imagination is AI, as a 3D artist myself I try to go a completely different way and try something new so I used stable diffusion installed locally. So I didn’t use it online. I trained my own models and I used Blender to create some trigger images so I could get some fresh ideas from the AI. I used prompts. It was a lot of fun and now I’m getting more into it and creating more and more AI content.”
Damian Gaume
Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of backlash on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube with many angry comments calling this AI animation lazy, cheating, disappointing, and garbled and that the prize should be rescinded and given to a more deserving artist (I agree!). I can see the idea of musical instruments and space there, but where’s the heart and soul? Where’s the creativity? Where’s the human factor? The Dark Side of the Moon is all about the human experience, with lots of mental health and emotional themes, and ironically, this animation has no emotion. Who even owns this? That’s why I’m bemused that this AI slop won. There had to be something better than this! Come on!
Well, I guess someone cheated their way into winning $10,000. I guess it doesn’t pay to be moral or ethical, many such cases!
Why this is bad
Well, this certainly has tanked Pink Floyd’s reputation and I can see Roger Waters off in the distance laughing and being like ‘thank goodness I’m not associated with David Gilmour’s mess.’ Maybe I’m biased though because I prefer Roger Waters to David Gilmour, but anyway this isn’t about their beef. Not only does selecting this subpar not human created animation reflect poorly on Pink Floyd, it also reflects poorly on the panel of judges I mentioned earlier in this blog post. How is it that you have this experienced group of people who are famous for what they do fall for this AI crap even after seeing his featurette saying as much? What does this say about their skills and expertise. I can’t even draw and I could tell that this was AI, how could they not? Then again, I find that boomers often fall for AI and I see boomer family members of mine sharing obvious AI creations and acting like they’re super impressive. I don’t know how online the members of the panel are so maybe they don’t know what AI is but I find it hard to believe. Maybe they thought that AI is the future and those of us who are against it are luddites and with Pink Floyd being such a pioneering band they thought that an AI music video would be cool (it isn’t!). On Facebook, I saw someone share this quote and I’ll share it with you because I couldn’t say it better:
“AI accidentally made me believe in the concept of a human soul by showing me what art looks like without it.”
But even worse yet, AI hurts artists by taking job opportunities away from them, by stealing prizes that should rightfully go to genuine artists, plagiarising artists’ work, and devaluing art by creating this race to the bottom – why pay someone to make art when you could just have AI make it for you? And where does the AI get these visuals? By looking at already existing art and ripping it off. Where’s the soul, where’s the passion, where’s the individuality, where’s the hard work? If you make something with AI, did you really make it? Do you really own it? Is it fair to the artists who made the art that the AI was trained on?
There’s one thing I really don’t take kindly to at all and it’s when people rip off hardworking people. I have skin in the game because I’m a writer. I’ve been doing this for almost a decade. I create all these blog posts myself from brainstorming to actualising it and do all the research and when I see how shite Google and other search engines are to use for research because now the first page of search results is full of soulless AI generated blog posts that are boring to read and have a lot of inaccuracies, it really hurts a lot as a writer seeing people cheat their way into experience, you can’t do that! You’re not just cheating other people who worked hard at their craft and cheating people who are looking for good, honest work, you’re also cheating yourself. Life is all about self-improvement. It’s a journey. How is having a computer do everything for you making your life interesting and fulfilling? Artists work hard to hone their craft and get the skills to paint and draw, whether it’s with an ink and paper or it’s with a drawing tablet and a computer, that’s still something someone made by hand and put their heart and soul into it. When I buy art, I value the time and skills it takes to create something and I want to reward that by buying art from a real artist. I love that handmade crafts have their little quirks to them and that’s what I like to see in art – little quirks and differences add to the charm and show that it was made by a person and not a robot. Art is a way to express yourself and break up the routine and add some beauty into your life. AI doesn’t do that. Just type some prompts into a computer and it will spit you out something that looks generic and formulaic? How is that art? I don’t think an AI could make music that really touches you like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon does. AI couldn’t have created such beautiful poetic long songs like Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks”, Thin Lizzy’s “Róisín Dubh”, and Kaleidoscope’s “The Sky Children”. No way. AI doesn’t have feelings or lived experiences. In order to write about real human things you need to have that human experience. AI doesn’t have a signature or a style that makes an artist special.
There’s nothing wrong with stock images or stock templates or premade patterns or the like. At least the original creator is getting properly rewarded for their hard work! Stock images can be licensed. If you buy a sewing or crochet pattern you’re supporting the person who made that pattern. You can put your own spin on it and learn from other people’s art and get inspiration.
You can’t draw well? Too bad. Either accept it or practice and get better or save up the money to commission an artist. I highly encourage people to learn to do all sorts of things and DIY. That’s how I got there with this blog. I was a broke college kid and later the wife of a PhD student and living below the poverty line, I couldn’t afford to hire someone to make graphics for my website, so I had to learn how to do photo editing myself and so I spent hours and hours playing around on Photoshop and learning the basics. I’m not great at graphic design, but I think I’ve improved a lot since the beginning.
Sure, AI can be a lot of fun and perhaps it can be helpful in some ways. I’ve vented to ChatGPT before when I felt depressed and didn’t want to burden others with my rants. Heck, ChatGPT can be really helpful in writing professional emails (despite being a writer I suck at writing professional emails and will agonise in front of the computer for hours only to get a nonchalant response in return lol). And okay, I admit it, I got a huge kick out of those AI Mr Krabs Irish rebel songs covers (if Clancy Brown recorded an album of these and titled it something like “Clancy’s Version”, I’d buy it – especially if it came in a Irish flag colours splatter vinyl version!). Also I laughed so hard at Squidward’s version of Sean Paul’s “Temperature”. But at least people are making these memes for fun, not to get rich. But even then, I miss the old days before AI where people would do impersonations of voices – to me that’s way more impressive, voice training is really difficult!
I just want more people to have time to create whether it’s painting, drawing, sculpting, photography, poetry, writing books, making videos, singing and writing songs, or playing an instrument. You don’t even have to be good at it. Just have fun! That’s what matters. You don’t have to make something groundbreaking or genius. Art is so therapeutic, helps keep you sane, and keeps the mind sharp. I find that art is way better therapy than any therapy session I’ve been to, whether it’s listening to music that fits the mood or cheers me up, sewing by hand, making some cool photo or video edits, taking pictures of my outfits or some flowers, and of course writing about rock bands in my signature storytelling way.
That’s why I believe in people having a work-life balance. I believe in UBI. I believe in moving past capitalism – it’s not fit for purpose in this day and age. Automation isn’t a bad thing when it comes to mundane or backbreaking tasks, but art itself shouldn’t be made by computers – that’s sacred. We should devote more of our time to creating. When you make art, you create something that lives forever. Think of all the dead poets, artists, playwrights, directors, actors, and musicians – they may no longer be here, but they created something that continues to touch lives even long after their departure wherever they may be. I have so much respect for artists and I never want to promote something that hurts them. I want to call out the things that harm creators. The reason I hate AI art is the same reason I hate those dead musician hologram concerts – no soul.
In the old days, art was limited to the rich. All those famous authors whose work you read in English class? Virtually all of them were from privileged backgrounds. They weren’t factory workers or farmhands by day and poets by night. I think about all those who came from poorer backgrounds who never had the chance to display their creativity and get better at art because they didn’t have the time to devote to it and develop their skills and evolve as an artist. My great grandfather’s family grew up poor in a shtetl (small Jewish town in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Europe), a couple of his brothers managed to get out of poverty and make names for themselves in music and writing. But for every person like them who escaped poverty and found prosperity, there are so many other talented people who remained in poverty for one reason or another be it bad luck or bad timing. I want art to be democratised, something for all to participate in. I don’t want creative fields to be full of industry plants and nepo babies. When you have fresh faces, that’s when you get innovation and we need that in movies and music. Art isn’t supposed to be stagnant. It’s supposed to be ever changing and evolving. Taking risks is a big part of art. How much art wouldn’t have been made had someone not taken that risk. Take chances with art, take a chance on someone new and promising. You never know what you might find.
Anyway I hope that Pink Floyd do the right thing and strip Damian of his prize and award it instead to someone who actually put heart and soul into their animation.
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