AI-Generated Viral Videos are Already Here
AI now "automates creative impulses," writes New Yorker staff writer Kyle Chayka — then wonders where that will lead. Chayka's first example is a Berlin-based photographer using AI tools to create a viral video showing Harry Potter characters as fashion models for the upscale French label Balenciaga: A.I. tools were involved in each step of Alexander Niklass's process, and in each element of the video. He created the basic static images with Midjourney, evoking the Harry Potter actors and outfits through text prompts such as "male model, grotesque, balenciaga commercial." Then he used ElevenLabs — a "voice-cloning" tool — to create models of the actors' voices based on previously recorded audio. Finally, he fed the images into a service called D-ID, which is used to make "avatar videos" — subtly animated portraits, not so far off from those that appear in the newspapers of the Potter world. D-ID added the signature lip synchs and head nods, which Niklass explained were a reference to fashion models tilting their chins for the cameras. The combination of child-friendly film and adult luxury fashion held no particular symbolism nor expressed an artistic intent. It's "entertainment," Niklass said. Yet the video's most compelling aspect might be its vacuity, a meaningless collision of cultural symbols. The nonsense is the point. The article also cites a song where the French group AllttA performs with an AI-generated simulation of Jay-Z. Chayka marvels at a world where "The A.I. content has the appearance of realism, without actual reality — reality solely as a style.... it seems that a Rubicon has been crossed: It doesn't matter that these artifacts are generated by A.I.; we can just enjoy them for what they are. It happened faster than I thought possible, but now that A.I.-generated pop culture has entered the mainstream, it seems unlikely that we'll ever get rid of it." Chayka asked ChatGPT how AI-generated imagery is changing our perceptions, and "It responded that there has been a 'blurring of the lines between real and artificial.'" The article ultimately ponders the possible implications of "a world in which every style, every idea, and every possible remix is generated as fast and frictionlessly as possible, and the successful ones stick and get attention." But at the same time, Chayka believes the final output's quality still depends on the humans involved (arguing that the Harry Potter fashion video was still more "appealingly odd" than later AI-generated videos copying the idea, like "Matrix by Gucci," "Star Wars by Balenciaga," and "The Office by Balenciaga".) A.I. tools may have been able to replicate actors' faces and generate fashionable outfits, but only Niklass could have come up with the concept, which required keen observation of both high fashion and the wizarding world — and also a very specific, extremely online sense of humor. With tools like Midjourney publicly available to anyone online, "everybody can create something visually appealing now," he said. "But A.I. can't generate taste yet," he continued.... To put it another way, execution may have been democratized by generative A.I., but ideas have not. The human is still the originator, editor, and curator of A.I.'s effects.
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