Roughly as soon as every week, Nick Cave blogs about music, faith, grief, and the infernal state of world affairs via the medium of fan correspondence in his Pink Hand Information e-newsletter. His meatier responses grow to be information tales, and few have traveled to date, or with such fervor, as his 2023 diatribes eviscerating ChatGPT. First, that January, he portrayed a lyric “within the model of Nick Cave” as an omen of the apocalypse and “a grotesque mockery of what it’s to be human.” A couple of months later, Cave elaborated that any lyricists utilizing synthetic intelligence have been “taking part in [the] erosion of the world’s soul and the spirit of humanity itself.”
However that was earlier than his good friend Andrew Dominik made a music video for Nick Cave & the Unhealthy Seeds’ “Tupelo” that includes a floating AI Elvis. Dominik—a longtime Cave collaborator and the director of Blonde, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and One Extra Time With Feeling—had been at work on the video behind Cave’s again. Offered with the end result on the music’s fortieth anniversary, Cave determined it was “a soulful, transferring, and fully unique retelling of ‘Tupelo,’ wealthy in mythos and a touching tribute to the nice Elvis Presley.”
Cave discovered that Dominik’s AI-animated images of Presley “had an uncanny high quality, as if he had been raised from the useless, and the crucifixion-resurrection photographs on the finish have been each stunning and deeply affecting.” He and his spouse, Susie Cave, he added, “have been blown away. As I watched Andrew’s surreal little movie, I felt my view of AI as an inventive system soften. To some extent, my thoughts was modified. ‘It’s a device, like another,’ mentioned Andrew.”
Removed from coming away from this spiritual expertise along with his tail between his legs, Cave emerged with a renewed understanding of his personal brilliance. “I imagine that the flexibility to alter one’s thoughts is the very definition of power,” he wrote. “We pursue the reality wherever it might lead, remaining versatile and humble sufficient to regulate our views as new proof emerges, no matter how uncomfortable that will really feel. It’s finally a type of resilience, not an indication of weak spot. Rigidity breaks; flexibility endures.” Watch the video beneath.
