Fury as AI Video Wins Competition Held by Pink Floyd
The rock band Pink Floyd has drawn criticism and sparked outrage after awarding a prize to an AI-generated music video.
Pink Floyd recently ran an animation contest to mark the 50th anniversary of their classic rock album The Dark Side of the Moon in which creatives were invited to submit music videos for songs on the 1973 album.
There was a $127,000 (£100,000) prize pool with 10 winners. Damián Gaume won the entry for the song Any Colour You Like but this created great controversy when Gaume revealed he used an AI video generator to make the video.
“The technique that I used for creating my animation AI,” Gaume explains in a video posted to Pink Floyd’s official Twitter page. “As a 3D artist myself, I tried to go a completely different way and try something new so I used Stable Diffusion installed locally, so I didn’t use it online.”
A #BehindTheScenes look at Damián Gaume’s winning video for Any Colour You Like in Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon 50th Anniversary Animation Video Competition. pic.twitter.com/fKutGuiQse
— Pink Floyd (@pinkfloyd) April 5, 2024
Gaume says he trained his own model and used Blender to create some “trigger images” to get “fresh ideas from the AI.” He also used prompts to create the mind-bending video which features a trippy guitar.
Backlash
However, upon the announcement that an AI video had won a prize. Pink Floyd’s Twitter page was inundated with negative comments about Gaume’s work.
“Yeah, that looks like dog s***,” writes one person.
“Pathetic. You guys really sold out, this is the ultimate betrayal of art,” writes another impassioned commenter.
“This dude calling himself an artist really makes me more angry,” says another.
The outrage spilled over onto YouTube where the winners were announced by the band’s drummer Nick Mason.
The Pink Floyd website is apparently down as of writing but Windows Central reports that artificial intelligence software was allowed to be used in the competition.
Gaume also received insults on his personal social media profiles including beneath a picture of his son.
AI and Competitions
The drama follows similar patterns when photography competitions attempted to incorporate AI. Last November, the World Press Photo contest walked back on a decision to allow AI-generated images into one of its categories.
People complain that AI models were built on the hard work of artists who did not consent to their work being trained. The legality of these practices remains unclear with multiple lawsuits against major AI firms still active.
Of course, AI video is still very much in its infancy and using Stable Video Diffusion is quite niche. OpenAI is set to release its offering, Sora, to the market soon which will surely mean an uptick in AI-genererated videos.
