Posted in: Current News, Music, Pop Culture, TV | Tagged: ai, Gerald Scarfe, pink floyd

Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon Competition Hit By AI Controversy

Pink Floyd has announced the winners of its The Dark Side of The Moon animation competition, in which an AI prompter won.

Pink Floyd has announced the winners of its The Dark Side of The Moon animation competition, which coincided with the album's fiftieth anniversary. They invited a new generation of animators to create music videos for any of the album's ten songs, with judges Nick Mason, Kyle Alba, Gerald Scarfe, Sarah Smith, Daisy Jacobs, Harry Pearce, Terry Gilliam, Alan Yentob, and Anton Corbijn.

"Given that it was the 50th anniversary of the album, and with the band's history of working with animation both in videos and on stage, we felt this needed to be acknowledged," said Pink Floyd's long-time creative consultant Aubrey 'Po' Powell. "It was a huge success with over 900 films being entered and the process of elimination for the judges was very complex. They eventually came up with the final 10 and I can only say they were brilliant choices and representative of the diverse styles of entries that all gave deep respect to the legacy of the band."

Ten winners were announced by Nick Mason. However there may be an issue with one of them. The winning video by Damián Gaume for Any Colour You Like was created, according to Gaume, using Stable Diffusion AI software. There was an immediate backlash and reaction against this video online, which overshadowed the other nine winners and the planned overall winners intended to be announced tomorrow. Some condemned one of the judges Gerald Scarfe, especially as the cartoonist and animator most associated with Pink Floyd's album and movie Another Brick In The Wall, which included intricate hand drawn animation, based on his cartoons, and considered a true classic.

There have been thousands of comments including the likes of "I don't understand why some musicians think stealing music for ai is bad, but somehow stealing imagery for ai is not. No thanks PF", "using ai art feels completely antithetical to the ethos of the dark side of the moon and pink floyd in general, this is really disappointing" and  "If there is one non musical thing I associate with Pink Floyd, it's incredible lovingly hand made animation. Not this putrid AI slop. What the fuck were any of you thinking picking this pile of shit as one of the winners???". Journalist Carolyn Hinds saying " The promotion and use of AI in creative spaces spells the end of the entertainment industry. It's capitalism, exploitation, and theft dressed up as convenient art. It's a sham. Groups like Pink Floyd legitimizing people who steal art from others should be ashamed and shamed."

The video in question is above, below is the Damián Gaume's "behind the scenes video" in which he explains that it was all locally sourced AI, as well as the other winning Pink Floyd videos.

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