Last month, Yung Lean made his US television debut with a recreation of his and GENER8ION's viral "Storm" music video at the VMAs. The hypnotic choreography captures the Swedish rapper/singer standing and smoking a cigarette in the middle of 66 dancing boys, and the live performance was even more mesmerizing. The video was shot by legendary French film director Romain Gavras, who expressed his disappointment in AI-generated slop imitations of the video that have ensued.
In a conversation with Vulture, Gavras says his daughter was the first to show him an imitation, which featured dogs. At first he thought it was cute, until the trend took an edgy turn, incorporating Elon Musk, Kim Jong-un, Hitler, Jeffrey Epstein, and the like. "It made me sad for all the people who put in so much work on our video," Gavras told Vulture. "A trend like this can make even good work look lame. Part of me wanted to quit filmmaking, move back to Greece, and become an olive farmer."
Vulture points out that many of the imitations were made using a tool called Genjutsu, which was released in late August by the AI video company Higgsfield. A few AI companies have even approached Gavras about licensing "Storm," but he declined. There's little possibility for him to take legal action against the imitations, as that would mean suing each user partaking in the trend. Besides, he maintains that none of them are close to the original anyway: "They're missing the swagger of Yung Lean," he says. "He looks like a dangerous baby. There's something in the imperfection of humanity, and the interior life of someone who dances or even someone who just smokes a cigarette, that's not quite there yet. But who the fuck knows what will happen in a year."
Read the full interview here.