Washed Out’s new music video was created with AI. Is it a watershed moment for Sora?
But ironically, to illustrate the tune’s sense of longing, the musician turned to something far less flesh-and-blood: artificial intelligence.
With Thursday’s release of “The Hardest Part,” Macon, Ga.-based Washed Out, whose real name is Ernest Greene, has the first collaboration between a major music artist and filmmaker on a music video using OpenAI’s Sora text-to-video technology, according to the singer-songwriter’s record label Sub Pop.
The roughly four-minute video, directed by Paul Trillo, speedily zooms the viewer through key elements of a couple’s life. The audience sees the characters — a red-haired woman and a dark-haired man — go from making out and smoking in a 1980s high school to getting married and having a child. “Don’t you cry, it’s all right now,” Greene croons. “The hardest part is that you can’t go back.”
“I think where we are now — that’s about to explode, and so I look forward to being able to incorporate some of this brand-new technology and seeing how that informs what I can come up with,” Greene said in an interview. “So, if that’s pioneering, I would love to be part of that.”
