Nick Cave, who has previously voiced strong misgivings about artificial intelligence, is now rethinking his stance—at least somewhat—after an unexpected gift. Celebrating the 40th anniversary of his song "Tupelo," Cave shared a new video crafted with AI by filmmaker Andrew Dominik. Dominik, working without Cave's prior knowledge, used archival photos of Elvis Presley and fed them through AI software, animating them to reflect the song's mythic take on Elvis' birth, Consequence of Sound reports.
In his Red Hand Files newsletter, Cave said Dominik told him he had created the video as a gift and asked him to "suspend your f------ prejudices and take a look." The video, Cave said, was both unsettling and moving. The AI-generated Elvis floats above crowds in a near-religious tableau, echoing the song's themes of salvation and rebirth. Cave said it was an "extraordinarily profound interpretation of the song" and "the AI-animated photographs of Elvis had an uncanny quality, as if he had been raised from the dead." Cave described being "blown away" by Dominik's work, admitting that it challenged his earlier discomfort with AI as an artistic tool: "To some extent, my mind was changed," he wrote.
Cave said Dominik told him AI is "a tool, like any other." Still, Cave remains cautious when it comes to AI's broader implications for creativity. He voiced particular concern over language models like ChatGPT and AI-generated music platforms, which he fears may "reduce music to a mere commodity, by eliminating the artistic process and its attendant struggles entirely." Despite his reservations, Cave sees value in remaining open-minded. "The ability to change one's mind is the very definition of strength," he wrote.
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