The Wizard of AI on Vimeo
Is this the world's first AI-generated documentary?
Alan Warburton was commissioned by the ODI's Data as Culture programme to bring us 'The Wizard of AI,' a 20-minute video essay about the cultural impacts of generative AI. It was produced over three weeks at the end of October 2023, one year after the release of the infamous Midjourney v4, which the artist treats as "gamechanger" for visual cultures and creative economies. According to the artist, the video itself is "99% AI" and was produced using generative AI tools like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Runway and Pika. Yet the artist is careful to temper the hype of these new tools, or as he says, to give in to the "wonder-panic" brought about by generative AI. Using creative workflows unthinkable before October 2023, he takes us on a colourful journey behind the curtain of AI - through Oz, pink slime, Kanye's 'Futch' and a deep sea dredge - to explain and critique the legal, aesthetic and ethical problems engendered by AI-automated platforms. Most importantly, he focusses on the real impacts this disruptive wave of technology continues to have on artists and designers around the world.
Commissioned by Data as Culture at the ODI: www.culture.theodi.org
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Disclaimer: this work is a non-commercial work of critical/educational/satirical commentary. Under UK law, this is referred to as ‘fair dealing’ and protects the work from claims of copyright.
Data use: According to the data taxonomies provided by www.translatingnature.org, this work derives from the following data types: living and biological and non-biological data; non-living, commercial, personal and licensed data; static data; generated, processed, retrieved data and 'anecdata' (including metadata); and anonymised; identifiable and unknown data.
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Full (hyperlinked) credits can be seen at www.thewizardof.ai
· Written, directed, voiced, animated and soundtracked by Alan Warburton.
· Back to The Futch animation by Ewan Jones Morris
· Special thanks to Joanne McNeil - https://vimeo.com/justbrowsing, Tom Pounder - https://vimeo.com/user3078533, Hannah Redler-Hawes and Omar.
· Wonderpanic Theme by Sonny Baker.
· Research Assistance from Fabian Mosele
· Steve Ballmer Genie by Christian Schlaeffer - https://vimeo.com/cschlaeffer
· Pretty fishes by UglyStupidHonest - https://vimeo.com/user3746465
· In Memoriam images by Alex Czetwertynski - https://vimeo.com/user2228130
· Concept development and AI collaboration from John Butler - https://vimeo.com/user3946359, Samine Joudat, Ben Dosage, @dzennifer, Ben Dawson - https://vimeo.com/user83259586, Alejandro González Romo - https://vimeo.com/user128947837, @symbios.wiki - https://vimeo.com/user45174927, Ugur Engin Deniz - https://vimeo.com/engindeniz
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AI Tools used:
· Runway Gen 2 to generate 16:9 ‘AI Collaborator’ video clips
· Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DALLE 3 to generate still images
· Pika to generate 3 second fish loops
· TikTok for detective speech synthesis
· HeyGen to generate AI talking detective head
· Adobe Photoshop AI to expand images
· Topaz Gigapixel AI to upscale images
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Clips attribution:
· What is the Internet? (1995) by The Today Show
· Microsoft Clippy (1997 onwards) web compilation
· CNN Internet Report (1993) by CNN News
· Napster Report (2000) by CNN Headline News
· Tech Events in 2023 Be Like (2023), Verge, featuring footage from META
· Zane Lowe meets Kanye West (2015), BBC Radio 1.
· Unit 9 AI Workflow (2023) Unit9Ltd
· Thanos Snap, Avengers: Endgame (2019) Marvel Studios, LLC
· for AI artist clips, please see onscreen attribution.
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