How Peter Gabriel Is Championing A Generation Of AI Artists
Teaming up with Stability AI the famed musician tasked AI artists with reinterpreting his tracks as dreamy music videos for the Diffuse Together competition.
Teaming up with Stability AI the famed musician tasked AI artists with reinterpreting his tracks as dreamy music videos for the Diffuse Together competition.
Since they launched in 2021, Stability AI has amassed a community of over 200,000 creators, developers and researchers exploring the capabilities of the novel technology. With their open source ethos (their software is freely available to the public), the initiative encourages anyone to contribute to the growth of AI technology. Looking to further encourage the use of AI, Stability AI has teamed up with Grammy Award-winning musician Peter Gabriel on the Diffuse Together competition tasking creators with creating an audio-visual dreamscape soundtracked by one of his songs. This week the competition came to a close and Gabriel crowned Junie Lau as one of their winners, who we caught up with after Sunday's finale stream on Twitch.
The competition invited AI artists from all over the world to utilise Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion platform to create their own Peter Gabriel music video. The pioneering text-to-image model resulted in no shortage of creative films which were premiered during a finale Twitch live stream. As one of the two first place winners, Lau received a cash prize of $1500 and tickets to Gabriel’s show during his I/O tour. ‘Totally amazing work’, Gabriel said of Lau’s film, The Court named after the musicians 2023 single. Lau, a director and production designer whose work has been featured in British Vogue, crafted a dreamscape reminiscent of 70s pulp fiction and film noir. The tongue-in-cheek film follows an AI Peter Gabriel as he attempts to get away with the theft of a rubber chicken.
'This music video I created for Peter Gabriel serves as an exploratory journey, delving into what life could be like if we were to alter a seemingly insignificant choice. It presents a critical reflection on the importance of truth and fairness while also suggesting that there is no clear boundary between demons and angels in this world,' Lau tells SHOWstudio about her AI film.
Upon winning the first place prize Lau explained, ‘The power of AI and Stable Diffusion lies in the ability to transport Peter to any location, dress in any fashion, and let him experience dimensions beyond the real world. This technology surpasses the limitation of age, time, and space.’
As AI technologies continue to evolve, it's easier than ever for creatives like Lau to bring their ideas to life as images and films. 'Moving forward, I am thrilled to delve into the realms of virtual identity, digital humanity, and the art of storytelling, pushing the boundaries of creativity by utilising the latest AI tools in this dynamic era of hyper-modernism', Lau tells SHOWstudio. Watch the Diffuse Together finale below.