Roughly as soon as every week, Nick Cave blogs about music, faith, grief, and the infernal state of world affairs by means of the medium of fan correspondence in his Red Hand Files e-newsletter. His meatier responses turn out to be information tales, and few have traveled thus far, or with such fervor, as his 2023 diatribes eviscerating ChatGPT. First, that January, he portrayed a lyric “within the model of Nick Cave” as an omen of the apocalypse and “a grotesque mockery of what it’s to be human.” A couple of months later, Cave elaborated that any lyricists utilizing synthetic intelligence have been “taking part in [the] erosion of the world’s soul and the spirit of humanity itself.”
However that was earlier than his pal Andrew Dominik made a music video for Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ “Tupelo” that includes a floating AI Elvis. Dominik—a longtime Cave collaborator and the director of Blonde, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and One More Time With Feeling—had been at work on the video behind Cave’s again. Introduced with the consequence on the tune’s fortieth anniversary, Cave decided it was “a soulful, transferring, and completely unique retelling of ‘Tupelo,’ wealthy in mythos and a touching tribute to the nice Elvis Presley.”
Cave discovered that Dominik’s AI-animated pictures of Presley “had an uncanny high quality, as if he had been raised from the lifeless, and the crucifixion-resurrection pictures on the finish have been each surprising and deeply affecting.” He and his spouse, Susie Cave, he added, “have been blown away. As I watched Andrew’s surreal little movie, I felt my view of AI as an inventive machine soften. To some extent, my thoughts was modified. ‘It’s a device, like another,’ stated Andrew.”
Removed from coming away from this spiritual expertise along with his tail between his legs, Cave emerged with a renewed understanding of his personal brilliance. “I imagine that the flexibility to vary one’s thoughts is the very definition of energy,” he wrote. “We pursue the reality wherever it might lead, remaining versatile and humble sufficient to regulate our views as new proof emerges, no matter how uncomfortable that will really feel. It’s in the end a type of resilience, not an indication of weak point. Rigidity breaks; flexibility endures.” Watch the video under.
