Loved the Music of The Lion King, but not it's AI-generated scenes
525 words (~3 mins read)
This past weekend I attended a concert titled “The Music of The Lion King” in Helsinki. I had been looking forward to the event for weeks, since The Lion King holds a very special place in my heart. Ever since my childhood, I have loved every bit of the movie, and it remains to this day one of my favorite movies of all time. A big part of that is its majestic music, with artists such as Elton John and Hans Zimmer. You might then understand why I was so excited to come to this concert. It’s not The Lion King Musical, but I was still hyped.
The concert delivered when it came to the performers and the music. The singers were amazing, their voice really powerful. The musicians and orchestra brought tears to my eyes on several occasions. The familiar music touched my heart. The concert also included a homage to Africa and some interesting facts surrounding The Lion King’s impact worldwide. Heck, we even got Shakira’s “Waka Waka” shoehorned in, and we were invited to join and enjoy the show. 😀 I was delighted to get a picture with the performers after the concert.
But there was a stain. During the performance, we had several screens showing images and animations related to the songs and The Lion King. And let me emphasize the “related” word. They were not the original scenes from the movie. They probably didn’t have the rights from Disney to show those in the event. Instead, we got clearly AI-generated videos of live-action animals resembling those of The Lion King. Sometimes they were OK to watch, other times the color palette and the soulless AI-slop were extremely distracting. During the interpretation of the Stampede theme, the wildebeests appeared to be carelessly treading instead of running for their lives. The hyenas seemed to have an ocean inside their mouths as they drooled excessively. And the animal bodies often had disproportionate limbs and features. The coloring in the scenes was also overbloated.
All of it naturally led to the key question: “would it have been better to NOT have any content at all over having AI-generated content?”. It’s a tough question to answer, and it will of course vary from person to person. In my humble opinion, I would have preferred no visual nor animated content at all than this AI-generated slop. And I know that some people worked on putting that animation together, I know that I’m complaining about someone else’s work. But the fact is that sometimes I had to close my eyes to more fully enjoy the concert and not get distracted. And what bothers me is that this drop in quality is just going to permeate in every form of media moving forward. I don’t mind quality content made by AI. But I do mind AI-slop being portrayed as quality content.
Have you been in any events recently where AI really turned you off? What is the best way, do you think, of showing dissatisfaction towards this trend (assuming we don’t want to go to the extreme of avoiding quality events just because they throw AI into them)?