Watch the first major music video created by Sora from OpenAI

Does AI have a place in the music industry? At least one label seems to think so.

This was announced by the record label Sub Pop Los Angeles Times that the music video for “The Hardest Part,” a single release from artist Washed Out on May 2, marks the first collaboration between a major music artist, filmmaker and OpenAI’s text-to-video generator Sora. It is also the longest video created with AI to date.

The creative team behind the video says Sora allowed them to create something great without breaking their budget (the total cost of the video was not disclosed). Access to Sora, which is not yet available to the general public, was provided free of charge to video director Paul Trillo. Over the course of six weeks, he edited together 55 clips, selected from the estimated 700 clips Sora produced from his text prompts.

“A lot of music videos just don’t have the budget to really dream big,” Trillo told the Los Angeles Times. “I think AI can help the music industry do things that even Ernest could dream of, that he might not have dared to dream of before.”

But not everyone in the music industry is as supportive of industry-wide integration of the technology. Last month, more than 200 artists signed a letter calling for greater regulation of AI tools in music. Signatories included names like Billie Eilish, J. Balvin and the descendants of Bob Marley and Frank Sinatra.

While the music video for “The Hardest Part” may be the first official collaboration with Sora, several Korean pop acts have already used similar technologies to produce creative works. On April 24, the group Seventeen released a teaser for a (human-made) music video that intentionally used AI-generated clips to comment on the use of AI across the industry. A title card asked, “In our current reality where everything can be created with AI, who is the true maestro?”

A day earlier, on April 23, the group RIIZE released what was supposed to be an “AI Generated Visualizer” for their single “Impossible.” Comments on the video made it clear that fans were not impressed with the choice. “It’s not too late to delete this,” read one. “With all due respect to RIIZE, I hope something like this never happens again,” read another.

The viewers of “The Hardest Part” are also unimpressed. “The more you look at it, the worse it gets,” said one commenter. Another summed up his feelings in four words: “The future is disappointing.”