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This 100% AI-generated Music Video By OpenAI’s Sora Shows Potential for the Music Business

The artist and director first considered hiring dancers and filming on location but due to time and financial constraints, they experimented with OpenAI's Sora to create the full music video.

Washed Out, an indie pop artist, explored Open AI's Sora text-to-video technology to create visuals for his latest release The Hardest Part, a song about lost love.

P.S.: OpenAI is the same company responsible for creating ChatGPT.

The singer sought the assistance of director Paul Trillo for the four-minute visual narrative, which takes you through significant stages of a couple's journey. Featuring a red-haired woman and a dark-haired man, the story unfolds from youthful intimacy and rebellious acts to marriage and parenthood.

“I think where we are now — that’s about to explode, and so I look forward to incorporating some of this brand-new technology and seeing how that informs what I can come up with. So, if that’s pioneering, I would love to be part of that.”  Washed Out said in an LA Times interview.

He was, however, skeptical at first

“I feel like with my music and most of the videos I’ve made over the years, it always starts from, like, a real emotional, sincere place. Many of the examples of AI video I’d seen existed in the dreaded uncanny valley, human-like but eerily artificial”.

Still, Washed Out was willing to experiment with the latest technology.

The gag is also that real actors did not play the couples here; instead, they're entirely digitally created using Sora's AI. This should spark debate about AI practicability in video production in the music industry. I must admit it is interesting to see scenes that would typically need crazy resources—like sets, actors, and locations—brought to life through written text prompts ONLY?

“Not having the limitations of budget and having to travel to different locations, I was able to explore all these different, alternate outcomes of this couple’s life,” Paul Trillo, the director said.

OpenAI introduced Sora in February and has been conducting trials with directors while engaging with Hollywood executives and producers. Sora is not publicly available yet but Trillo is one of the creatives with early access. OpenAI’s focus is currently on ironing out concerns relating to intellectual property and ethical use.

The use of AI in the music industry has been very controversial, particularly as some creations unlawfully leverage artists' voices or likenesses. I’d given more context about this in the past. In response, labels and musicians have advocated for legislation to counteract the misuse of AI. Also, music powerhouses like Universal Music Group (UMG) and YouTube have partnered to crack down on such developments.

While there are concerns about the potential threat of this technology to people's jobs, I believe it will also alleviate [relative] resource constraints for many creatives, such as budget limitations, travel expenses - say for visualizer, for instance. In the case of Trillo and Washed Out, they initially considered hiring dancers and filming on location but encountered difficulties due to time and financial constraints. It was then that Trillo suggested an experiment with Sora.

In November 2023, I shared how Victony presented a compelling use case of AI's potential by sharing four versions of ‘guest verses’ from Burna Boy, Central Cee, Dave, and Tems in his then-new release, Jaga Jaga. I’m not handing out ideas here but it would be nice to see how this also plays on the visual front.