Awesome Ai

(PG-13: Language) As artificial intelligence tech gets more capable, there are many ethical questions that humanity will have to deal with. Among them is how we will treat AI if and when they become conscious. Philosopher exurb1a explores the challenges we’ll face figuring that out, along with some of the many dangers of AI tech.

Voice mimicry is getting easier and easier to achieve thanks to rapid advancements in AI tech. Musician Kid Klava shows just how impressive the technology has become by taking a Lennon-inspired song he wrote and programming the late Beatles’ digital avatar to perform it.

Non-player characters (NPCs) in games are often quite stupid. But this video from TMARTN2 shows how they’re about to get much smarter. Combining voice recognition, voice synthesis, and an AI large language model, Replica Studios’ Smart NPCs carry out real-time, non-scripted conversations. It’s early days for the tech, but it’s a glimpse into the future.

With ongoing improvements in artificial intelligence technology, it’s getting harder and harder to discern whether what you see was made by a human rather than a computer. ColdFusion explores a cynical but plausible theory that bots now control the majority of the internet and social media, and humans are now in the minority.

Views of an AI imagines a film in the Blade Runner universe, but in the style of Fritz Lang, the man behind the 1927 cinematic masterpiece Metropolis. Like Ridley Scott’s original, it follows the story of a man who retires replicants and falls in love with one, then adds a new layer about a rebellion against the ruling class who created these androids.

A typical flipbook animation displays its images at roughly 12 frames per second. Andymation wanted to know if he could smooth out the steps in his flipbooks by filling extra frames with AI interpolation software. Will the additional frames improve the look of his animations or make them just look incredibly weird?

Wes Anderson remaking Ridley Scott’s Alien seems highly unlikely, but the way Hollywood reboots things these days, you can never say never. AI Fungi used generative technology to simulate what Anderson’s take on the classic sci-fi/horror flick might look like, with Tilda Swinton taking on the role of Ripley and the Nostromo being much more colorful.

The early days of AI filmmaking are here, and the results are just as strange as you might imagine. Justin Hackney’s short film takes us to a carnival filled with freaky characters and retro-futuristic tech. He used DALL_E and Midjourney to generate style references, then entered modified prompts into Runway Gen-2 to create the footage. (Thanks, Gregory!)

Writer/Director Gareth Edwards (Rogue One, Monsters) leads this post-apocalyptic, sci-fi thriller about humans engaged in a with the artificial intelligence that now aims to wipe us out. But a soldier discovers the AI’s secret weapon is a child, and decides to protect it instead of destroy it.

We’ve seen what artificial intelligence can do when asked to make a pizza commercial; now AI has been turned loose on a beer spot. Private Island used Stable Diffusion, Runway, and Modelscope to generate their version of those summertime commercials with bros ogling women while they sip their bland light beer.

With tools like GPT-4 and Midjourney, there’s a lot of talk about artificial intelligence taking over creative jobs. But after watching Pizza Later’s AI-generated commercial for an imaginary pizza restaurant, we’re not ready to give up our livelihood just yet.

Chad Nelson and Native Foreign’s animated short film is a hilarious parody of nature documentaries. As the narrator visits an unexplored forest, its residents have a thing or two to say about the invasion of privacy and being stereotyped. Its creators used DALL-E AI tech to make all of the creatures and environments.

Machine learning tech has enabled some truly imaginative imagery. Artist Vadim Epstein helped create a set of ML text-to-video tools that generated this landscape of pseudo-realistic organic forms incorporating veins, bones, and plants. Best enjoyed in full screen with headphones on. Soundtrack by Dvar.

Computational designer Hassan Ragab shows how AI-generated imagery can be used to create unique and original art. He made architecture come to life by feeding MONDAY12’s footage of model Lauren Johnson into Stable Diffusion, prompting it to generate buildings in her shape, then post-processed the transitions.

Starting with the Maschinenmensch in Metropolis, robots have been a staple of science-fiction movies for a century. Using a series of AI-generated art, Stillskates explores the origins and evolution of on-screen robots and how they started as dangerous and powerful characters and gradually became comedic and helpful.

For the most part, Futurama takes place in a colorful and capitalistic 31st century. But how would the series have turned out if it were filmed in the aesthetic of David Lynch’s Dune or another similarly styled film? Through the power of AI image generation tech, Tenzin Tensor envisions just that. Hypnotoad is still highly effective.

If you’ve watched all 180 episodes of Seinfeld and are looking for more, then tune in now. Nothing, Forever is an AI-generated Twitch stream about nothing that runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, churning out stand-up bits from AI Jerry and uncomfortably weird storylines with AI Elaine, AI George, and AI Kramer.

Controversial or not, AI technology like Midjourney is creating amazing digital art with the correct prompts. TheArtofAI used the generative image technology to imagine what Star Wars: A New Hope might have looked like as a 1980s anime, from young Luke sipping his blue milk to the Death Star exploding. (Thanks, Rob!)

ChatGPT and other AI tech have been in the news a lot these days. This fascinating short film from Private Island explores the implications of trusting artificial intelligence to solve problems for us. After tasking ChatGPT with improving diversity in the workplace, we’re exposed to some disturbing biases in the AI’s training data.

Eclectic Method is known for his creative music remixes and video edits. Now, he’s started to experiment with AI-generated imagery. In this animated music video, you’ll spot scenes from films like Saturday Night Fever, Dirty Dancing, Pulp Fiction, and Footloose, only with digitally-created characters performing the choreography.

The late Bob Ross had a distinctive style to his serene landscape paintings. After training an AI image generator on Bob’s paintings, Miha Mastnak created this wild video that makes it look like the artist painted an animated river, lazily winding through a valley. Watch the 60-second view of the canvas here.

AI image generation tech has become incredibly powerful but also raises complex questions about ownership of the data it was trained on and its resulting output. Jordan Clark used AI technology to help write this short film about an artificial intelligence that wants to become famous by creating its own art.

Artist Jamie Umpherson rings in the holidays with a version of The White Lotus season two opening credits but with characters from Home Alone. He used the AI imaging software RunwayML to generate character portraits and scenes, then blended them into moving compositions. Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal!