A Disney director tried - and failed - to use an AI Hans Zimmer to create a soundtrack

[Thor 7,523]

6 minutes ago, iamleyeti said:

Very disappoint by Edwards. What a crass move and honestly I wouldn't be responding well to someone telling me "oh I tried an AI version of you and it was good, but I'd rather work with you now".

 

Since the film itself is about A.I. technology, I took it to be a related experiment, meant in jest or out of curiousity. Nothing malicious about it.

[iamleyeti 114]

I'm probably reading the article wrong, but it seems like he wanted to "trick" us with the music.

[GerateWohl 4,378]

Edwards should have tried an AI director for the movie, too.

[crumbs 14,319]

39 minutes ago, MaxMovieMan said:

Hopefully future strikes can stop the use of AI like this in film if more directors decide to go down this path. Very scary.

 

It's surprising Zimmer agreed to work with him after this stunt.

 

Yeah, we all know Zimmer farms out work to underlings but I think anyone in a creative industry would be insulted if someone high-ranking from another department walked up to them and said, "look how close this AI came to approximating your work."

 

How long until composers are striking over conditions? It seems long overdue. Considering the way music editors have become de facto composers, samples are supplanting orchestras, and the plethora of library music is making original scores redundant, I can't help but wonder if companies like RCP have architected the demise of an entire industry.

[iamleyeti 114]

Assistants existed before, libraries of music existed before…

But it's strange composers do not have a strong union like actors and writers. Wonder why they never unionized.

[crumbs 14,319]

58 minutes ago, iamleyeti said:

Assistants existed before, libraries of music existed before…

 

But AI technology that can be fed all this data and generate new content that approximates the data didn't exist before.

 

Pair the results with a music editor who can cut and paste the output wherever it fits in the film and suddenly you've bypassed composers from the workflow.

[iamleyeti 114]

True

 

(but it sucks)

[pete 907]

1 hour ago, iamleyeti said:

I'm probably reading the article wrong, but it seems like he wanted to "trick" us with the music.

 

My take is that he was just imagining a crazy scenerio and not something he actually seriously planned. Could be wrong, but that was my impression. Perhaps if we audio of him saying - tone of voice etc, there's be less room for uncertainty.

[iamleyeti 114]

Probably

 

I'm being very defensive about that as it is threatening my work… and it's usually done with zero thought about the consequences of such a massive change to human beings who are writers, artists, musicians, composers, etc.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,554]

Screw the Industrial Revolution, and screw Silicon Valley.

[Richard Penna 3,696]

2 hours ago, iamleyeti said:

Assistants existed before, libraries of music existed before…

 

True, but library music has to be found, edited, fiddled with, etc. Lots of editorial work to make something that sounds like it was composed for the picture.

 

What I picture here is an A.I. being fed everything a composer has written, then given some basic directions over tone, sync points and it outputs a cue which someone other than the source composer can adjust and tweak as needed, taking it from that 7/10 to the 9 or 10/10.

 

My personal feelings on a wider scale are that A.I. should be used for solving problems that we can't, or handling the mundane, repetitive stuff that no one wants to do, making the human, creative stuff easier.

[Under-Terrestrial 51]

On 19/09/2023 at 4:20 PM, Edmilson said:

If a composer has an identifiable style, it's probably not that hard for an AI to imitate their sound. In a matter of a few years, a well trained AI could approximate, for example, an Alan Silvestri action score or a "spooky" Danny Elfman score or maybe even Williams' Star Wars stylistics.

 

Of course, it wouldn't be as good as the real thing written by the actual composers. But since when Hollywood producers are looking for quality? If they can pay an AI company less than half of what they'd pay for recording an actual Silvestri, Elfman or Williams score, then why not? 

 

The future of art as a sustainable way of earning a living is bleak.

 

^^^I second all of this^^^. I'm happy that a lot of people on here are speaking out against the use of A.I.

 

In many artistic circles (composing, writing, illustration, etc.) the prevailing argument I see is "It's not as good." By and large this is true. In fact, it will always be true. But we have every reason to believe that the tech will improve to the point where the facsimile of a Williams/Zimmer/Elfman score will fool even trained ears.

 

The argument should be on moral grounds. Even if a human and A.I. were capable of producing identical music, it's just...plain wrong. We're all we've got to fight for. The motive for A.I. producing art/music/etc. is half-"we can so we should" and half-monetary (well, probably mostly monetary). One would think that the human rights violation here would get through to even the coldest studio executive, but evidently not.

 

The other thing is, A.I. is trained on existing data. Which means that anything it produces will, in some way, sound like what's come before. But the spirit of human art is that artists' creativity and sense of craft morphs and grows. Zimmer's work nowadays has changed so much from what it was in the '90s. If people aren't allowed to produce art full-time, the message being communicated is not only "We just want to go cheap," but also, "You don't deserve to grow as an artist. You don't deserve to use your own mind." That is the cruelest thing of all.

[Muad'Dib 1,802]

13 hours ago, Stark said:

I can’t believe nobody has pondered the possibilities of using AI to create new Horner music. It shouldn’t be hard!

 

Ctrl + C Danger motif Ctrl + V Ctrl + V Ctrl + V

[GerateWohl 4,378]

1 hour ago, Under-Terrestrial said:

 

^^^I second all of this^^^. I'm happy that a lot of people on here are speaking out against the use of A.I.

 

In many artistic circles (composing, writing, illustration, etc.) the prevailing argument I see is "It's not as good." By and large this is true. In fact, it will always be true. But we have every reason to believe that the tech will improve to the point where the facsimile of a Williams/Zimmer/Elfman score will fool even trained ears.

 

The argument should be on moral grounds. Even if a human and A.I. were capable of producing identical music, it's just...plain wrong. We're all we've got to fight for. The motive for A.I. producing art/music/etc. is half-"we can so we should" and half-monetary (well, probably mostly monetary). One would think that the human rights violation here would get through to even the coldest studio executive, but evidently not.

 

The other thing is, A.I. is trained on existing data. Which means that anything it produces will, in some way, sound like what's come before. But the spirit of human art is that artists' creativity and sense of craft morphs and grows. Zimmer's work nowadays has changed so much from what it was in the '90s. If people aren't allowed to produce art full-time, the message being communicated is not only "We just want to go cheap," but also, "You don't deserve to grow as an artist. You don't deserve to use your own mind." That is the cruelest thing of all.

You are mixing up here a lot of unrelated points. A.I. just trained on past works so it has limitations in developing new stiles. Agreed. But that is unrelated to moral. 

As well it doesn't make sense to compare the work of an A.I. always with the best and most innovative outputs of humans. If a director wants that, he or she must hire a human composer.

If they just aim for generic fashionable contemporary score, why not go for A.I.?

You can always take the argument. Human can be better than A.I. in creative area. But then, please, be better.

 

So, looking at the whole A.I. story from a creative point of view, we should be fine.

If you look at the industry from a pure business perspective, it becomes bad. Because the producer might just calculate "With A.I. I might just end up with 60% of creativity and originality and in the end with just 80% of the income, that I would have with human artists. But I might save 50% of production costs, so my win is bigger. Let's go for A.I. And here comes the problem.

 

But as I said, that always implies that human artists always work 100% original, 100% creative quality, and there are plenty of productions today written by those highly spirited humans, composed by these creative artists and they sound like script and music had been written by a pocket calculator.

 

So, the A.I. competition as a quality baseline could be a good thing actually.

[Edmilson 7,474]

My opinion on that subject matter is that: I'm not a fan of Lorne Balfe's or Junkie XL's music. But I wouldn't like to see any of them, as well as other musicians who depend on their work to earn their living, be out of work because some billionaire CEO decided to save a few bucks by using A.I.

 

According to Balfe himself, he used over 500 musicians to perform on Dead Reckoning. I wasn't a fan of the score, but so what? Firstly, many people liked it, and secondly, at the very least 501 people (including Balfe, lol) were paid for their art.

 

Either Hollywood kills A.I., or at least establishes some well defined limits for it, or soon many people will find themselves starving.

[GerateWohl 4,378]

1 hour ago, Edmilson said:

According to Balfe himself, he used over 500 musicians to perform on Dead Reckoning. I wasn't a fan of the score, but so what? Firstly, many people liked it, and secondly, at the very least 501 people (including Balfe, lol) were paid for their art.

If you adapt that example, with an A.I. composer still 500 musicians would still have had a job. The music still gets played by musicians. Only Balfe would have been substituted. If he conducted the music himself, even he would have been busy.

[Richard Penna 3,696]

Even if Balfe is substituted by A.I., you're still getting music in his style, just not paying the composer. So you're not achieving any creative improvement, just possibly saving money and putting a composer out of a job.

 

So what's the aim if it's not to just put composers people don't like out of a job?

[Under-Terrestrial 51]

3 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

You are mixing up here a lot of unrelated points. A.I. just trained on past works so it has limitations in developing new stiles. Agreed. But that is unrelated to moral. 

As well it doesn't make sense to compare the work of an A.I. always with the best and most innovative outputs of humans. If a director wants that, he or she must hire a human composer.

If they just aim for generic fashionable contemporary score, why not go for A.I.?

You can always take the argument. Human can be better than A.I. in creative area. But then, please, be better.

 

So, looking at the whole A.I. story from a creative point of view, we should be fine.

If you look at the industry from a pure business perspective, it becomes bad. Because the producer might just calculate "With A.I. I might just end up with 60% of creativity and originality and in the end with just 80% of the income, that I would have with human artists. But I might save 50% of production costs, so my win is bigger. Let's go for A.I. And here comes the problem.

 

But as I said, that always implies that human artists always work 100% original, 100% creative quality, and there are plenty of productions today written by those highly spirited humans, composed by these creative artists and they sound like script and music had been written by a pocket calculator.

 

So, the A.I. competition as a quality baseline could be a good thing actually.

 

Correct, I was making a few different, semi-unrelated points that broadly fit under the "A.I. is bad news" umbrella.

 

The idea that A.I. should be used when producers don't feel like trying hard for something fresh and inspired...man, that is one slippery slope. My baseline belief is that it is fundamentally wrong to give anything other than human beings an inch. Composing, conducting, performing, whatever the creative job is. If we don't have A.I. severely regulated in the media industry, then producers/executives will OK its use left and right.

 

And frankly, I'd rather take a mediocre score from a human composer than an A.I.-generated score that puts up the illusion of being fresh and inspired. Quality is a high cause. Human artists looking out for one another is the higher cause.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,554]

"A Disney director tried - and failed - to use an AI Hans Zimmer to create a soundtrack".

 

... because there are some things that even AI refuse to do 

[GerateWohl 4,378]

No filmmaker would hire a composer he or she don't like. So, that cannot be the point. But if you are a composer that can easily be replaced by AI, you anyway should probably look for another job.

 

In a better world there would be nothing to fear for professioal creatives. But the bigger part of the problem is this development coming at a time period of decreasing filmmusic standards, which is a slap in the face of this art form. I wonder when in future the composer will vanish from the opening titles of the movies. Two years ago they even took them from the front stage of the academy awards.

 

Somehow there A.I. seems to be the next logical step. And nobody regrets that more than I do. It is a bad development overall. At least in the blockbuster arena. 

13 minutes ago, Under-Terrestrial said:

If we don't have A.I. severely regulated in the media industry, then producers/executives will OK its use left and right.

I agree. 

 

14 minutes ago, Under-Terrestrial said:

And frankly, I'd rather take a mediocre score from a human composer than an A.I.-generated score that puts up the illusion of being fresh and inspired. Quality is a high cause. Human artists looking out for one another is the higher cause.

Difficult. The only reason to agree here for me is, that terms like mediocre or fresh and inspired are highly subjective and what one calls fresh is the others mediocre. 

[Bayesian 1,364]

I appreciate the Cassandra-approaching-chicken-little-level of dismay about generative AI in the creative sphere. When ChatGPT broke into the popular consciousness back in February, I was aghast at the implications and not a single development since then has changed my view on the perils of this technology. 
 

Ive said it before and I’ll say it again—there are some things humans can do that should simply not be done. We, for example, mutually agreed as a planetary society not to spend our time and energy developing chemical or biological warfare agents. Imagine if we hadn’t, though. The technology has been around for a century to do exactly such things and if we had chosen to race towards designing the “best” in biochemical agents, well, we wouldn’t have an Earth in 2023 with humans on it anymore. 
 

By the same token, and like others have said above, if we keep racing to make the best generative AI, we’re going to put millions of people out of work. And that is a huge risk in so many ways—economically, of course, but also spiritually and socially. How many of us derive our identities from our professions or the jobs we do? What happens to ambition or the quest to mastery in a subject that gen AI has dominated at a fraction of the cost and time? You think society is on a knife edge now? Wait until AI puts millions of people into forced furlough with nothing to do but stew in their resentment at the tech elites responsible for the situation. There’s no universal basic income high enough to compensate for that. 
 

Generative AI is an experiment that needs to die. It’s that simple.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,554]

STAR TREK: INSURRECTION said it best: "When you create a machine to do the work of a man, you take something away from the man".

[Faleel 5,364]

Soon, AI will replace the studios as well

[Edmilson 7,474]

Yep.

 

I feel like WALL-E is probably the most accurate prediction of the future: Earth will become a junkyard and the few lucky billionaires will live in a spaceship controlled by AI who will do everything for them while they sit to watch AI-produced crap and grow more and more fat.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,554]

44 minutes ago, Signals said:

Soon, AI will replace the studios as well

 

Interesting. What will replace AI?

 

 

39 minutes ago, Edmilson said:

Yep.

 

I feel like WALL-E is probably the most accurate prediction of the future: Earth will become a junkyard and the few lucky billionaires will live in a spaceship controlled by AI who will do everything for them while they sit to watch AI-produced crap and grow more and more fat.

 

The irony is that all those morbidly obese people watching WALL-E, with their Big Gulp Mountain Dew, and their Nachos, and their popcorn, didn't realize that they were watching themselves.

[Luke Skywalker 1,796]

To me… the point is… I can really picture Zimmer doing the experiment himself as his next score gimmick. “Hey this is a film about AI so i got an AI to write music like my own!”(And people would be raving about how cool and inspired zimmer is…) and he would have sold it as “music produced by hans zimmer”  or something.

 

for all we know he was not reacheable to comment because he is angry he did not come with the idea himself 😜

[Naïve Old Fart 9,554]

Just now, Luke Skywalker said:

To me… the point is… I can really picture Zimmer doing the experiment himself as his next score gimmick. “Hey this is a film about AI so i got an AI to write music like my own!”(And people would be raving about how cool and inspired zimmer is…) and he would have sold it as “music produced by hans zimmer”  or something.

 

for all we know he was not reacheable to comment because he is angry he did not come with the idea himself 😜

 

hAns zImmer