This delightful short puts the "art" in artificial intelligence

What happens when you combine an AI image generator, a 98-year-old woman named Lillian as well as Harry Potter? The result is "HAIRYPOUTER A short film by Chris Carboni, a director who layers increasingly whimsical AI-generated imagery and a comments on the classic novel by a hilarious nonagenarian.

"Lillian is my grandma," says Chris. "She has always had a close relationship and I've been recording her reviews for about 10 years."

When AI image generators began to take over the internet at the mid-2022 point, Chris saw the stars align into a new project that could leverage his many hours of recording and aid in understanding the relationship he has with this new technology. "I had a lot of doubts about these machines] and I was looking for an opportunity about them in a small way," explains Chris. "At the moment I was talking with my grandmother who just finished the Harry Potter series, that I had bought for the occasion as a birthday present."

After that, the movie began to come together using a quick crew of "my grandmother along with my wife and me, as well as our composer and sound designer who was the complete team" - and all the rest was (futuristic) the story of. The capabilities of AI are constantly evolving at a a breakneck pace and we sat down with Chris Carboni for a chat about the world of art and artificial intelligence.

The image of this video is stunning. What did you use to get the results?

Chris Chris: We used MidJourney as it was in its first version. It began by entering Lillian's words unedited and seeing what it would generate based on just the quotes of the interview. We loved the artistic style it had come up with after only a couple of rounds of creating new images. Therefore, I had written down the characteristics of the art direction based off this image that it had produced.

I think the first image that we were shown was Ron who was wafting his hair. It was incredible. I believe it was kind of shoulders up and the guy clearly did not wear a shirt. The guy looked as if he was a beach god. And then when we had an image of Harry and Ron together, it posed they were almost hugging and we thought, "Oh, this is wonderful."

It was up to the AI to come up with these interesting theories, and once we came across one we really liked, we guided the AI to follow that line to ensure that it will remain entertaining, and simple to follow.

What was it like applying AI to this actually human tale?

Chris: At the time I was making this film I had some degree of anxiety about AI]. It was a pleasure working with it for this project. I believe that this was a good use case for this project since the use of AI was a key element of the story.

This is what made it exciting, interesting and unique. The project was about the unpretentious but adorable relationship between AI and human beings. The project was not one where we chose to not invest in illustrations and instead use AI instead. It was a story where the use of artificial Intelligence was the basis of storytelling.

How do you feel about AI being a part of the creative process?

Chris: There's certainly something compelling there, but it's gotten obviously so much more complex since these generators are so ubiquitous. The potential of these generators has been released in every one of these use cases. The subject has become a lot more complex than I think like it once was from my personal knowledge and opinions about it.

Anyone who is in a creative space is going to have to figure out the implications of this for their work, and adjust to the fact that things are probably going be changing. Along with this change, will come opportunities to do incredible innovative things. But also the automatedization of many of the craft we as artists admire. That makes me feel a bit sad, if I'm being sincere. It worries me that art will be reduced in value and becoming more expensive that it already is.

Are you planning to use this technology in your work in the future?

Chris: Well I am a huge fan of making use of AI to boost my email and also as a personal assistant capable of answering questions, explaining complex ideas and completing repetitive chores. In terms of creative work though, I don't fully know. It is certainly not my intention to use the process in a manner which would substitute human talent within my teams. It is my opinion that the result aren't as great.

A large part of the work we do comes from collaborating with others. An entire project that is created from start to finish using AI is dependent on inputs from one person's brain. Sometimes, that could be great however, most of the time, productions benefit from a team of specialists that work in tandem, each one bringing their own expertise and creative insights into the mix.

The most compelling use cases I see are for generating initial ideas, and kicking off creativity. It could be for raising money for an idea and displaying an initial idea to get something off the ground. For animation, however it is essential to have complete control over the details of your scene in terms of production and artistic reasons. The level of control you need will likely be coming soon but isn't quite there yet.