Creativity Squared: On A.I. Music Videos and the Future of Immersive Entertainment

Dear Creativity Squared Member,

What’s a Full Stack Creator? Find out in today’s episode with Ben Nash!

Ben is a visionary Full Stack Creator based in Cincinnati, Ohio who marries design, code, and artistic flair to craft digital products, websites, fabricated signage, and A.I. art. With an adventurous backpacking spirit combined with a degree in Industrial Design, honed in innovative hubs like San Francisco and Austin, Ben’s diverse background fuels his creative work.

Ben and I met through Cincinnati's burgeoning A.I. scene at the CincyAI Meetup for Humans that I cohost with Kendra Rameriz at the UC Digital Futures building. Supercharging his next creative and career trajectory, I was impressed with Ben’s prolific work and A.I. art challenges that he gives himself. He’s also part of the upcoming A.I. collaboration to recreate Terminator 2 as a parody. He’s one of 50 artists who want to push the limits and showcase what is possible using the latest A.I. tools, which you’ll learn more about in our conversation.

In today’s episode, discover how Ben collaborates with musicians on A.I. music videos, how he sees A.I.-generated characters emerging as the next celebrities, and his thoughts on the future of immersive video with Apple Vision Pro. We dive more into his DevNull project which pushed Ben to create 12 music videos using one of his favorite A.I. video tools, Neural Frames. Our conversation includes other A.I. tools that he uses and is experimenting with, plus Ben’s creative process and the democratization of creativity.

Ben’s also in the middle of another one of his challenges. He’s on Day 22 of his 60 Day challenge to make a music video every day with A.I. and then to share the video and what tools he experimented with as a Full Stack Creator.

If you’re into music and music videos, you won’t want to miss this conversation!

This past Tuesday, we had our second CincyAI Meetup where 120 people signed up to attend! We’re the largest A.I. Meetup in the region, and I’m humbled and inspired by the conversation, collaboration, and community — not to mention the amazing projects and talent right here in Cincinnati! Our next one will be Tuesday, December 12, from 3-5pm at the UC Digital Futures building again. Sign up here!

Also, Kendra, my amazing CincyAI cohost, has a great how-to to get started using OpenAI’s recently announced GPTs — check it out in her newsletter, AI Simplified. 

For those attending the Content Authenticity Initiative’s CAI Symposium 2023 at Stanford University, let me know. I’ll be there too, and I’m really excited for the opportunity to connect, learn, and discuss the urgent need to implement solutions that bring transparency to digital content.

Scroll on to discover:

• 🍎 Envisioning the Future of Digital Media with the Apple Vision Pro

• 📆 Calendar of Events: Cincy

• 🎧 More on Episode 29

• 🤯 A.I. + Creativity News Roundup

• 👯‍♀️ Apply to Join the Clone Club

• 💎 Creativity Squared Premium Member Benefits

• 💝 Milestone Rewards

We’re just getting started, and if you enjoy our content, I’d really appreciate it if you could share, review, like, subscribe, leave a comment, and help spread the word about Creativity Squared in whatever way you’re willing to. Your support is greatly appreciated, and the whole team looks forward to growing with your help. Thank you!

Here's to exponential possibilities!

Helen

Helen Todd (she/her)
Human behind Creativity Squared
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CreativitySquared.com
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How creatives are collaborating with A.I.

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📆 CALENDAR OF A.I. EVENTS: CINCY

For those local in Cincinnati, join these upcoming A.I. events. 🥳 

👩‍🏫 DEC 7 - Hosted by Tensure, “Plotting Your Course with Generative AI” will take place on December 7 from 2-4pm at Morton’s Steakhouse in OTR. Join to discover how GenAI can be more than just a buzzword—it can be a transformative force for your business. Sign up here.

🤝 DEC 12 - Join me and others interested in all things A.I. at the CincyAI Meetup for Humans, cohosted by Creativity Squared, on Tuesday, December 12, at the UC Digital Futures building from 3-5pm ET. Sign up now!

✏️ FEB 2 - Save the date for February 2 because the women’s network Ellevate is teaming up with IBM for an afternoon of A.I. programming here in Cincinnati. More details to come!

Missed the A.I. Avatars & Aperitifs event? Here’s the recap video:

Looking forward to meeting those who can make it in person and geeking out about all things A.I. and creativity!

Listen: E29. A.I. Music Videos & Movies
Move Over Celebrities! A.I.-Generated Characters & Creators Have Arrived with A.I. Artist & Full Stack Creator Ben Nash

Apple | Spotify | YouTube | Pandora | Amazon | Google | SoundCloud | iHeart Radio

This is an excerpt from the podcast episode accompanying blog post — check out the full conversation here.

Scratching the Surface of The Process Behind the Videos

Ben has an extensive tech stack, using about six to ten different tools to complete a project, and is always experimenting with new tools. He discusses a few of the many tools he uses to make his magic, one of his favorites being Neural Frames, which is an A.I. animation generator. What sets it apart from most other A.I. video generators is that you can continuously insert prompts throughout the timeline of a track.

With Neural Frames, users can drill down and display the constituent parts of a track and then fine-tune the video animations to visually react to those different sounds, however dramatically or subtly they want. It really gives the user the full ability and creative control to tell their story throughout the video. 

“I pay attention to every second, I’m constantly adjusting. For one of those three-minute videos, for example, takes about eight hours of time. That’s how much effort I put into it.”

Ben Nash

Using his recent video “Al’s in the Mix from Mac Lives” as an example, Ben explains more of the high-level creative process to get to the finished product. He’ll use ChatGPT as a resource to generate the initial lyrics in some projects, then paste those lyrics into Soma to generate audio. Out of several dozen pieces of generated audio, he’ll compile the best ones in Adobe’s audio editor and slice them together into one track. Ben generates the video elements with Moon Valley and then modulates them with Neural Frames. After hours of rewrites and tweaking, Ben puts it all together with captions and text animations in Capcut. 

When it comes to prompts, Ben describes his as ambiguous and abstract, yet detailed. He shares one from a video he made with DevNull: “nostalgia layered composition, circular abstraction, detailed characters.” Although the words may sound like a crypto wallet passphrase, Ben says the verbiage is key to the output. 

“When you say ‘in the style, graceful balance,’ that really does mean something to these language models, and it does pull out a specific style. So it’s the abstract elements you can still control quite a bit of; it’s not just throwing something at the wall and seeing what comes back.”

Ben Nash

As A.I. video technology evolves, Ben says he expects to see more consolidation among critical tools. 

Check out the full conversation today!

Your A.I. + Creativity News Roundup

With all of the A.I. news flooding our feeds and screens, we’ve got you covered. News to check out includes:

OpenAI Pumps the Brakes on ChatGPT Plus Singups The Verge — A little over a week after announcing a bunch of new features at its debut developer conference, OpenAI is pausing signups for ChatGPT Plus. The subscription offers access to features like OpenAI’s new custom GPTs, which let anyone create their own versions of ChatGPT.

Why the Godfather of A.I. Fears What He’s Built The New Yorker — Geoffrey Hinton, the man who almost singlehandedly kept the candle of neural networks burning through A.I. winters, thinks A.I. should be “mortal.”  Hinton says that chaining an A.I. to a specific chip so that it could be destroyed could be a safeguard against malicious AGI, and would also address energy efficiency. 

SAG-AFTRA Board Approves Strike-Ending Contract on 86% Vote Variety — Leaders of the actors’ union voted 86% in favor of a deal with studios that ended the 118-day strike on Friday. Members now have until Dec 5 to ratify the deal. A.I. agreements were some of the last to be resolved during negotiations. Per the terms, digital replicas will be limited unless actors are compensated and give consent. 

Microsoft is finally making custom chips — and they’re all about AI The Verge — Nvidia’s highly sought H100 GPUs will have new competition next year. Amid surging demand for chips capable of running A.I., Microsoft will use its new Azure Maia AI chip and Azure Cobalt CPU to overhaul its cloud computing infrastructure. 

YouTube will label AI-generated videos that look real NPR — The video-sharing platform is expanding its A.I. policies to cover more than political content. Now creators must label all realistic content generated by A.I., or risk account suspension/demonetization. YouTube will also build a process to request the removal of A.I. content depicting real people. 

Unleashing JARVIS-1: Revolutionizing AI Agents in Minecraft’s Dynamic Universe Johnny Emmer on Medium — A new multimodal A.I. agent can plan and execute complex tasks in Minecraft over a long time horizon using enhanced memory and multimodal input. A group of Chinese A.I. researchers published research claiming their JARVIS-1 agent could perform complex benchmark tasks in the game with 5x greater accuracy than previous Minecraft agents. 

AI knows the score — and it could help instrumentalists make beautiful music Purdue University — New A.I. models developed by Purdue faculty can coach string instrumentalists on their pose and technique using vision and audio analysis. Another model developed by faculty is intended to fill in the missing instruments of an ensemble using audio analysis to match the tempo and sound and generate the missing instrument(s).

Apply to Join the Clone Club Today
Digitally Clone Yourself: The Avatar Experience Cincinnati

👯‍♀️ Ready to be digitally cloned? Get your own custom synthetic avatar! Creativity Squared is collaborating with our partner and sponsor, Render, to bring The Avatar Experience to Cincinnati, OH, by appointment that fits into your schedule. Digitally clone yourself to unlock streamlined and dynamic video content — Apply to be cloned today!

There are less than a thousand known hyper-realistic custom synthetic avatars in existence, so participants will be at the forefront of this groundbreaking A.I. technology. Custom synthetic avatars are part of a massive and growing digital avatar market and is projected to be $270B by 2030.

Custom synthetic avatars can be used for creating:

• Dynamic online course instruction

• Streamlined SEO video production of blog or audio-only content

• Turnkey social media and email marketing video content

• Engaging customer service messaging

• And more!

👯‍♀️ In case you missed the announcement, I’ve digitally cloned myself! Learn all about mine in episode E14. Not Deepfaked! I Cloned Myself. You’ll meet Helen 2.ODD, my digital double, and discover why and how I made my A.I.-created custom synthetic avatar.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Thank You to Render

Creativity Squared is supported by Render which provides Digital Likeness solutions for personal brand businesses, thought leaders, influencers, and business leaders who want to leverage their synthetic, A.I.-powered Likeness to communicate more effectively online and create audio and video content from anywhere without going on camera. Learn more by visiting: https://rendermedia.ai.

Interested in partnering with Creativity Squared? Reach out!

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