The Wizard of AI (2023) Single Channel HD Video Essay, 19m 19s, subtitled.
Is this the world’s first AI-produced documentary? The Wizard of AI is a 20 minute video essay about generative AI, produced one year after the release of Midjourney v4. Treating this particular release in November ‘22 as an historic moment in visual cultures and creative economies, the essay focusses on the real impacts this technology continues to have on artists and designers around the world. The video itself was produced using generative AI tools, and is 99% comprised of images and videos created with Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Runway and Pika. Yet the artist is careful not to give in to the ‘wonderpanic’ brought about by generative AI, using generative AI tools themselves to discuss and critique the legal, aesthetic and ethical problems engendered by AI-automated platforms.
Commissioned by: Data as Culture at the ODI. Visit their Wizard of AI page here.
Credits:
Written, directed, voiced, animated and soundtracked by Alan Warburton.
Back to The Futch animation by Ewan Jones Morris.
Special thanks to Joanne McNeil, Tom Pounder, Hannah Redler-Hawes and Omar.
Wonderpanic Theme by Sonny Baker.
Research Assistance from Fabian Mosele.
Steve Ballmer Genie by Christian Schlaeffer.
Pretty fishes by UglyStupidHonest
In Memoriam images by Alex Czetwertynski
Thanks to everyone who helped with concept development, even if your work was lost in the edit: John Butler, Samine Joudat, Ben Dosage, @dzennifer, Ben Dawson, Alejandro González Romo, @symbios.wiki, Ugur Engin Deniz.
—-— If you find this video useful or entertaining, please click 🍏 here 🍏 to leave a tip ——-
———————-
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, and Adobe After Effects to put everything together.
Data use: According to the data taxonomies provided by Translating Nature, 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.
Note: This work is intended to be 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. Find out more here.
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 current AI artist clips, please see onscreen attribution
