'Are you f#@!ing serious': Controversy erupts after a video generated by AI is declared the winner of Pink Floyd's animation competition

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The AI generated video was one of 10 finalists, winning a prize of £10,000.

Damián Gaume drums up controversy by winning Pink Floyd's animation contest with video created using generative AI.
(Image credit: Damián Gaume, Pink Floyd)

What you need to know

  • Classic rock band Pink Floyd held an animation contest to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Dark Side of the Moon album.
  • On April 5, Damián Gaume's entry for "Any Colour You Like" was announced as one of 10 winners, with a prize of £10,000. The video was created using generative AI.
  • The post has been met with controversy, as unhappy fans of Floyd voice their disdain for the use of "soulless" generative AI winning over hand-animated pieces by human artists.

The winner of an animation contest with a £100,000 prize pool has stirred up significant controversy. Classic rock band icon Pink Floyd hosted the animation contest as part of the celebration surrounding the 50th anniversary of the album Dark Side of the Moon. The winning video, submitted for the song "Any Colour You Like," was generated using a Stable Diffusion model combined with adjustments made in Blender by 3D artist Damián Gaume. 

The Pink Floyd Twitter account shared a behind-the-scenes video of Gaume describing the technique used to generate the video and openly declaring it to be AI. Gaume's video was one of 10 winners who shared the prize pool, earning around £10,000.

Pink Floyd has historically worked with animators and artists to create interpretations of their music over the band's long career, making an animation contest an easy fit for marketing the celebration. The competition was announced in early 2023 and was judged by a panel of industry veterans, including English cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, known for producing animations for The Wall for Pink Floyd and Disney's Hercules. Additional panelists included Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason and BAFTA award winner Terry Gilliam. 

The listed rules and regulations for the contest, revised in August 2023, did state that artificial intelligence software was allowed for entries. However, the person submitting the entry must submit proof of the creative process and software that "assumes or obtains (or tries to assume or obtain) any copyright or other rights' ownership in your video entry."  In the behind-the-scenes video, Gaume shares that he utilized Stable Diffusion to generate the winning animation trained on their models created in Blender. The winning entry was among six videos Gaume submitted, all created with generative AI.

Artists, animators, and general fans of Pink Floyd rallied together in disgust at the victory. In a quote retweet of the winner's announcement post, one Twitter user with the handle @floydposting decried, "are you f***ing serious" [sic.] Others drew parallels to the differences between the behind-the-scenes videos for other animations. Many behind-the-scenes videos showed artists carefully illustrating, rigging animations, and creating claymation. Meanwhile, Gaume featured the winner sitting in a chair and speaking using Stable Diffusion to create animations from prompts. Despite claiming the AI generator was trained only on specific works, none were shown in the video.

Generative AI has fallen into a legal gray zone, as regulations and copyright law fall behind the advancing technology. Stable Diffusion and other language models like it are widely panned for scraping art, music, and video content created by humans to reassemble and regurgitate AI-generated imagery, audio, and videos. Copyright law protects the original creators from theft in many scenarios, but there is no way to opt works of art out of being used as a trainer for large language models. Still, because generative AI recycles the content it is trained on into something vaguely different, it is often lumped in as a case of Fair Use. 

Gaume's AI-generated win is not the first of its kind. In 2022, a similar uproar occurred when Jason Allen won first place in the digital art category at the Colorado State Fair's fine arts competition with an image generated using Midjourney. 

Despite the backlash and negative attitude toward generative AI, companies seem poised to go all-in with the technology. Adobe has integrated generative AI into its Creative Cloud software, and AI-powered laptops are flooding the market. 

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Cole Martin
Cole Martin
Writer

Cole is the resident Call of Duty know-it-all and indie game enthusiast for Windows Central. She's a lifelong artist with two decades of experience in digital painting, and she will happily talk your ear off about budget pen displays. 

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • fdruid
    In a few years we're gonna laugh at this kind of backlash. Well, I am laughing now to be honest.
    AI generation is another kind of tool. It shouldn't be rejected as such. It's like questioning a book for being written on a computer instead of a typewriter.

    Actually reminds me of back in the 70s when artists like Queen made a point to say they didn't use any synthesizers in their records, because it was considered to be "cheating". Look at how absurd that proposition sounds now, but then it was actually a matter of art or creation being dishonest and artificial.

    I don't even need to explain how synthesizers have changed music, to make it more easy and accessible to create (have a string sound instead of an orchestra, which also didn't make string players disappear) and how they can indeed be used as their own thing, to bring different textures and tones. Not to mention music genres based entirely on using synths.

    See? Technology is a tool, let's not fear new ways to do things like prehistoric men were afraid of fire.
    Reply
  • John McIlhinney
    fdruid said:
    In a few years we're gonna laugh at this kind of backlash. Well, I am laughing now to be honest.
    AI generation is another kind of tool. It shouldn't be rejected as such. It's like questioning a book for being written on a computer instead of a typewriter.

    Actually reminds me of back in the 70s when artists like Queen made a point to say they didn't use any synthesizers in their records, because it was considered to be "cheating". Look at how absurd that proposition sounds now, but then it was actually a matter of art or creation being dishonest and artificial.

    I don't even need to explain how synthesizers have changed music, to make it more easy and accessible to create (have a string sound instead of an orchestra, which also didn't make string players disappear) and how they can indeed be used as their own thing, to bring different textures and tones. Not to mention music genres based entirely on using synths.

    See? Technology is a tool, let's not fear new ways to do things like prehistoric men were afraid of fire.
    I agree and disagree. Yes, AI is a tool and it makes sense to use it if you can produce the same or better results then that's fine. If you're doing it for advertising or entertainment then the ability to attract customers or entertain them is what matters. In the context of an animation competition though, I think it's a bit different. It doesn't necessarily even take any animation skill to get AI to generate an animation for you and I think that most people would agree that an animation competition is intended to test the animation skills of the competitors. Even if it was the best entry, I would still not reward an AI-generated animation in this context, because it's not the result alone that matters but also the skill required to produce that result. If there's little to no skill involved, the result is irrelevant, in my opinion.
    Reply
  • Rumpystiltskin
    This is a competition. We are trying to see whose abilities are greatest. Not who can use technology the best.

    Imagine how all the weightlifters, gym bros, and strongmen would feel if the next World's Strongest Man competition was won by some dude named John Smith, a crane operator from NYC. People would say he cheated, that it's not fair. Do we laugh at the strong men for trying to pick up heavy things with their hands and arms and legs instead of letting technology do all the work?

    Now maybe you think, "Well obviously cranes can't be allowed." So do we say AI tools are not allowed in animation competitions?
    Reply
  • fjtorres5591
    The contest rules explicitly *allowed* AI tools.
    And, unless somebody was doing cell by cell animation ala old school Disney, everybody was using software of one kind or another.
    Pearl clutchers.
    Reply
  • Rumpystiltskin
    fjtorres5591 said:
    The contest rules explicitly *allowed* AI tools.
    And, unless somebody was doing cell by cell animation ala old school Disney, everybody was using software of one kind or another.
    Pearl clutchers.
    100% right. It's there in the rules. People are mad because either they didn't think of it or don't know how to use the tools. I mean if I trained and trained my muscles and got beat by a crane...yeah I'd be mad too. I wouldn't have a leg to stand on...but I'd be mad.
    Reply
  • fdruid
    John McIlhinney said:
    I agree and disagree. Yes, AI is a tool and it makes sense to use it if you can produce the same or better results then that's fine. If you're doing it for advertising or entertainment then the ability to attract customers or entertain them is what matters. In the context of an animation competition though, I think it's a bit different. It doesn't necessarily even take any animation skill to get AI to generate an animation for you and I think that most people would agree that an animation competition is intended to test the animation skills of the competitors. Even if it was the best entry, I would still not reward an AI-generated animation in this context, because it's not the result alone that matters but also the skill required to produce that result. If there's little to no skill involved, the result is irrelevant, in my opinion.

    Well it's an animation contest, what is judged is the product that is a finished animation, it's not a contest about how authentic, original or great is the process. In this case to me this style of animation really fits the concept and music style. Won't be as appropiate for other works. Like with glitch art or digital noise, it's just a color in the palette.
    Also honestly I don't think generating an AI video like that is completely devoid of skill. But even if it was, we're back to questioning the very nature of art, back to debating whether Duchamp's urinal is art.
    Maybe precisely because AI generation is the most anti-artistic tool (supposedly), using it for making art is what's revolutionary here.

    We shouldn't even be talking about gatekeeping in art, everyone should create the way they want because that's the point.
    Reply