Pink Floyd Turns Fans Red For Picking AI Animation As 50th-Anniversary Winner
Photo 145254537 © Enriscapes | Dreamstime.com
Pink Floyd has landed on people’s not-so-bright side, and at a rather unfortunate time too. For the 50th-anniversary celebration for the legendary Dark Side of the Moon album, the band invited fans to submit animated music videos for a chance to win a slice of a £100,000 (US$126,000) prize pool. Alas, when the lunar dust settled, the grand prize for Any Colour You Like went not to a traditional animator but an AI-generated video, sparking outrage and a debate about creativity in the machine age.
3D artist Damián Gaume, a 3D artist, emerged victorious with his AI-powered video for the song. Gaume used Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image model, to create the animation. Unsurprisingly, the selection of an AI-generated entry left many fans feeling deflated.
Comments of overwhelming disappointment ranged from accusations of a “slap in the face” to disbelief (“are you f**king serious?”). Critics argued that the dedication and artistic vision human animators bring cannot be replicated by AI.
Wow, an “animation” made with almost no effort and entirely from the stolen work of others.
— Kastor (@kastorcaster) April 6, 2024
Sad and pathetic.
Fans lamented the snub to “hardworking artists” and decried this as “one of the darkest days for art, animation and creativity.”
One particularly pointed response argued that the win amounted to giving “the middle finger” to those who poured months into creating original visuals, only to be outdone by a “soulless unthinking machine.”
Explaining his process on Pink Floyd’s YouTube channel, Gaume highlighted that his Stable Diffusion software was installed locally, not online, which meant he trained his own models. He further noted that “prompts” helped bring the images to life.
“As a 3D artist myself, I tried to go a completely different way and try something new, so I used Stable Diffusion,” he justified.
[via DIY Photography, Technopedia, Windows Central, cover photo 145254537 © Enriscapes | Dreamstime.com]
