AI-generated video is one of the winners of Pink Floyd's animation competition and the fans are enraged

The legendary rock band Pink Floyd celebrates 50 years from the Dark Side of the Moon album launch. They thought that it was a good thing to have an animation contest with a £100,000 ($126,833) prize pool for this anniversary but things got haywire when one of the winner clips turned out to be AI generated.

Damián Gaume, the artist behind the video called Any Color You Like has admitted that he used the Stable Diffusion LLM and then he edited the clip using the Blender software. Actually, Pink Floyd included his Thank you video on their X channel congratulating him for the win.

What is all the stir about the AI-generated clip?

Pink Floyd’s prize announcement almost immediately caused negative comments on the X thread. Most commenters were arguing about the fact that the so-called artist didn’t, in fact, do anything except hit the Generate button. Others were enraged because an AI-generated video took the £10,000 ($12.633) individual prize that would belong to a real artist. The shaming continued on the same tone in the thread but they are all probably missing an important point to this contest: its rules and regulations.

Pink Floyd’s team clearly outlined that the use of Artificial intelligence software is allowed as long as you don’t try to claim any copyright or other rights of ownership on the clip and submit a detailed description of the creation process.

We don’t know if the jury received the description they needed from the contestant, but we think they did. Although the clip clearly bears the mark of the AI to the naked eye, it’s also as clear that he worked a lot on the video after its raw generation. And if you’ve ever used Stable Diffusion to generate a video, you know exactly what we mean.

If we look at the jury board, we have the English cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, who produced animations from Pink Floyd’s The Wall, the famous Terry Gilliam, who needs no other presentation, and Nick Mason, the Pink Floyd drummer. Although they are all legendary for their work, we honestly wonder if they know anything about AI video generation software.

The bottom line is that although we respect the artistic process and drive behind an artist’s creation, Gaume didn’t do anything out of the guided lines of the contest. However, he openly recognized that he made his job a lot easier by using AI for his clips. So, if anyone wronged here, it’s only the staff who wrote the rules and regulations of the contest to allow AI-generated videos in the contest. That is also debatable because Pink Floyd has been known for promoting avant-garde creations in terms of graphics and design.

It all falls in a gray area that will be widely explored in the future with all AI-generated content. However, these disputes will draw some lines around what can and cannot be considered original art and creation.

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