{"id":45636,"date":"2025-07-29T18:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T18:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/45636\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T18:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T18:07:08","slug":"nick-cave-defends-andrew-dominiks-ai-powered-tupelo-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/45636\/","title":{"rendered":"Nick Cave Defends Andrew Dominik’s AI-Powered ‘Tupelo’ Video"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNick Cave<\/a> hasn\u2019t always held artificial intelligence in the highest regard. Back in 2023, a fan sent him a song that ChatGPT had generated \u201cin the style of Nick Cave,\u201d to which the musician bluntly responded<\/a>: \u201cThe apocalypse is well on its way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Cave\u2019s opinion has changed somewhat after the filmmaker Andrew Dominik<\/a> used AI to create a new music video for \u201cTupelo\u201d<\/a> on the occasion of the song\u2019s 40th anniversary. \u201cAs I watched Andrew\u2019s surreal little film, I felt my view of AI as an artistic device soften,\u201d Cave wrote on his \u201cRed Hand Files\u201d site<\/a> in response to a fan question. \u201cTo some extent, my mind was changed. \u2018It\u2019s a tool, like any other,\u2019 said Andrew.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCave and the Bad Seeds released \u201cTupelo\u201d as their second single in 1985 and it\u2019s been a staple of his live sets ever since. The song uses John Lee Hooker\u2019s track of the same name, about a devastating flood in Tupelo, as a jumping off point for an apocryphal tale about Elvis Presley\u2019s birth in the same Mississippi city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDominik \u2014 who\u2019s directed such films as The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford<\/a>, Blonde<\/a>, and Cave\u2019s documentary, One More Time With Feeling<\/a> \u2014 leans into the Elvis mythos in the video. The clip takes a bunch of old still photos of the King and uses AI to animate them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOr as Dominik put it, according to Cave, \u201cI\u2019ve taken a series of still archival images and brought them to life using AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCave said he wasn\u2019t aware that Dominik was working on the project until he shared the final cut. And the musician admitted he was skeptical when the filmmaker first described video due to his previous reservations about AI. <\/p>\n

\n\tCave stated he\u2019s still concerned about \u201cwriters using ChatGPT and other language models to do their creative work,\u201d as well as \u201csong-generating platforms that reduce music to a mere commodity, by eliminating the artistic process and its attendant struggles entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, Cave said Dominik encouraged him to \u201csuspend [his] fucking prejudices and take a look.\u201d And after watching his \u201cTupelo\u201d visual a few times, he admitted that he and his wife, Susie, were surprised at how much they liked it.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201c[W]e found it to be an extraordinarily profound interpretation of the song \u2014 a soulful, moving, and entirely original retelling of \u2018Tupelo\u2019, rich in mythos and a touching tribute to the great Elvis Presley, as well as to the song itself,\u201d Cave wrote. \u201cThe AI-animated photographs of Elvis had an uncanny quality, as if he had been raised from the dead, and the crucifixion-resurrection images at the end were both shocking and deeply affecting. Susie and I were blown away.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCave ended his letter by ruminating on the importance of being able to \u201cchange one\u2019s mind,\u201d calling it \u201cthe very definition of strength.\u201d He continued, \u201cWe pursue the truth wherever it may lead, remaining flexible and humble enough to adjust our views as new evidence emerges, regardless of how uncomfortable that may feel. It is ultimately a form of resilience, not a sign of weakness. Rigidity breaks; flexibility endures.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nick Cave hasn\u2019t always held artificial intelligence in the highest regard. Back in 2023, a fan sent him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,36094,181,507,36095,36096,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-45636","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-andrew-dominik","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-nick-cave","13":"tag-nick-cave-and-the-bad-seeds","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}