The artificial intelligence used in the video for Pulp‘s incredible new song, Spike Island, has split fans.
Frontman Jarvis Cocker has since explained the use of artificial intelligence is to show how he prefers “human intelligence” to generative AI. The music video depicts the cutouts of the band from Different Class morphed into new scenarios, such as walking through what is believed to be the Andes and dancing with people in the streets. A snippet of the video posted to Cocker’s Instagram shortly before the album, More, was announced, showed the generative AI. Fans were not best pleased, though the frontman has since explained its use in the video.
He said: “I was told that someone was interested in investigating A.I. & did I have any ideas? The first idea I had was to animate the photographs that Rankin & Donald took for Different Class: after all, back in 1995 they had been an ‘artificial’ way of dropping us into real-life situations & getting an album cover done whilst we were too busy recording the music for that album to pose for pictures. No brainer.
“It was my initial idea to produce a kind of ‘making of’ video that showed how the photos had come to be taken – but as soon as I fed the first shot into the A.I. app I realised that wasn’t going to happen. So I decided to ‘go with the flow’ and see where the computer led me.
“All the moving images featured in the video are the result of me feeding in a still image & then typing in a ‘prompt’ such as: ‘The black & white figure remains still whilst the bus in the background drives off’ which led to the sequence where the coach weirdly slides towards the cut-out of me.
“The weekend I began work on the video was a strange time: I went out of the house & kept expecting weird transformations of the surrounding environment due to the images the computer had been generating. The experience had marked me. I don’t know whether I’ve recovered yet…
“I have to thank Julian House for some expert post-production work & Rankin & Donald Milne for allowing me to use their work in this way. As it says in text at the end of the video, I think what they did for Pulp back in 1995 was ‘Human Intelligence at its best’. My final thought? H.I. Forever!”
The music video also ends on a note of thanks to the artists who provided the cutouts, confirming the preference to “human intelligence” over artificial intelligence.
It is not the first time a big band has used AI in their contemporary material, though perhaps one of the few examples of it being ironic. Electric Light Orchestra previously shared AI-generated images as the backdrop of their concerts, while A Flock of Seagulls relied on the generative tools for their recent album, Some Dreams.
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