If you want to see Thomas Jefferson fight a zombie in a UFC cage, this Independence Day, in front of the White House, I got you covered ;)
Seeing how my industry is being completely re-configured by AI technology, I figured I should give the new AI video generation tools a spin. It’s pretty amazing. Good and bad—like being trapped in the Matrix.
The images (and shockingly, even the sound) is of 100% digital origin, which the exception of some of the music. I do believe, with skill, and enough trials and error, one can create something with real soul capable of making something meaningful. Maybe even something that tugs at your heartstrings. It’s just a matter of putting all the elements—visuals, music, dialogue, sound effects, music—together in the right way, and walla! Everyone now has the tools readily available to give Pixar a run for their money.
Although, at some point there probably won’t be much money to run for, as more and more people crank this stuff out. And with each update, more and more of the formerly human-centered process will be automated. It sounds scary, but where things are now isn’t so bad (except for the jobs going bye bye part).
The new tech puts everyone, even a dummy like me, in the director/producer’s chair. As a freelance animator, I’d design each character, and animate every keyframe of every single motion of every single layer (basically all the tedious busy work), and then my boss would gives me notes and I address the notes, by doing said busy work over again. Now I can give AI direction, I’m the one giving it notes, and it does the busy work. It’s the same process, except everyone is the boss now. For a small (or large) monthly fee of course. Not to mention all of your personal data—everything there is to know about you, all your thoughts and ideas, down to the keystroke.
So maybe, just maybe, in the long run this could be bad...
Nahhhhh! What could possibly go wrong?
By the way, a funny thing happened to me while making this silly July 4th AI animation project. I discovered that Grok is infected with the very same “woke mind virus” that, according to its creator Elon Musk, it’s supposed to be curing.
In the article below, you can read my full convos with Grok as it gets triggered, refuses to edit a white demon (that it generated itself) into a black demon, and calls me racist. Yeah, I thought we were done with that too, but alas, it continues.
Grok AI Caught the Woke Virus
The “woke mind virus” of identity politics that Elon Musk preaches against has infected his own AI. Grok, the AI on X (formerly Twitter), is refusing to make the images I’ve requested. It says that it’s “classic racism” to illustrate a demonic figure “dark black, rather than white”.
Everyone may have access to the tools, but not everyone has the vision. Keep up the good work, Orf.