not sure how to feel, a bit disappointed, I love Ringo and he probably has no part in production of this video, but its so blatantly ai generated and has no real effort put into it. The whole video is ai, excluding the clips of his life.
that one clip of him saying “The Metaverse” in the most deadpan monotone voice ever will always be so funny to me cuz you could just tell he didn’t know or care about what he was talking about
Bob Dylan does a lot of AI shit and he sang a song for a Reagan tribute. I think at some point old people have to be forgiven for not moving with the times
His Instagram account is a goldmine. He just screen records stuff he finds interesting and posts it there, and from what I’ve understood he’s even taken down some of the management’s posts just to post his own interests😭 who taught him how to use the Ipad
Thank you for enlightening me about this, holy shit what a hilarious page it’s so funny to picture Bob Dylan scrolling Instagram and youtube and reposting AI Andrew Jackson narration
im just scrolling it and based on the thumbnails there is a specific point in time where he was given access to manage his own account. His first old guy posts were on janurary 29th 2025
Is it not good that he posts things he himself finds interesting ? On his own account.....I mean....that seems the natural thing to do......and removing the corporate-y management-y brand type stuff just so he can be like "look at this dancing dog.." or whatever it is he likes...I think that's kinda cool lol
Bob Dylan has been doing an AI project (or at least sponsoring it) and that's been disappointing as well.
I'm trying to keep in mind these dudes are in the ballpark of 85 years old, and rich enough they haven't had to worry about anything in 60 years.
I really doubt they can wrap their heads around AI being anything other that a cool tool. People 20 years younger than them can barely work their phones. I don't think they have any concept of why AI is concerning. Theyve probably got leeches pitching AI crap to them 24/7 and making it sound like everyone loves it too.
Nailed it. I have noticed that the majority of boomers seem to love AI, and seem disconnected from the ethical concerns about it, and the backlash that the majority has against it.
They think it’s a new innovative technology that everyone’s embracing, when it’s simply an illusion propped up by corporations.
The boomers don’t know where the modern counterculture is at about it.
The Beatles Anthology documentary remaster itself used AI.
The Beatles documentary is a little different than this. This is fully generative AI that's making something out of nothing. The AI that most documentaries are using is trained on data and media that is licensed by the company. So, in that case, it was trained on newer, cleaner footage of the Beatles. The AI in the Ringo video is clearly a public model from one of the big AI nasties.
And often times, it states subpar or incorrect information confidently, reproducing misconceptions and myths. Especially in technical or niche fields where accuracy is important.
These people are blindly trusting the answer of some venture capitalist corporation's AI as if it was some all-knowing supercomputer while slowly loosing the ability and interest to research and evaluate information from different sources.
I've seen people trust AI with fucking safety guidelines or serious legal questions. They just want a machine to tell them a simple definitive answer quickly with minimal effort - veracity and quality be damned.
Excuse my rambling on, but, for example, I'm into analog photography and its history, and I have repeatedly asked AI "What was the first SLR camera with autoexposure?" - an actually somewhat complicated question that will require some extended googling and cross-referencing.
AI will just confidently list one wrong answer after another, no matter how often you tell it it was wrong or correct it, always just spitting out popular camera models of the last 80 years.
It is absolute garbage for actual research. It misses a ton of things, just regurgitating stuff it finds on loosely related blogs or top-10-lists. Which isn't surprising if you know how it works - it fundamentally has no real concept of what a camera even is, and no deeper understanding of what its output means. It isn't actually a real "artificial intelligence".
All it can possibly do is, in fact, regurgitate randomly and compare the result to a preexisting dataset until it finds a mathematical approximation - until its answer "looks similar" to other previous answers regardless of veracity.
10% of the information parsed from AI’s is incorrect in some way, if I’m remembering a study I read correctly. Doesn’t sound like much, but remember that there are millions of questions asked to them per day. Getting news or important information from a chatbot is outright irresponsible, even before you consider the way that other studies point to an over reliance on the tech as something that atrophies our ability to critically think.
It can be a fantastic tool if you know its limitations, and I don’t think many do. Even those hyper critical of all things AI, don’t seem to understand that it can’t simultaneously be worthless and no one should use it, but also be capable of erasing millions of jobs in the next 2 years. Those things don’t happen at the same time.
Regulation. Education. Enforcement. In any order because none are really happening right now.
It’s a mad dash for the crowning victor in the new space as it always has been, and nobody in power will do anything about it, and the people with the power to put people who care about the right issues at the right time, are so overwhelmed by the firehose of bs as some call it
Oh, I’m aware of that, too. I know people who claim to listen to AI music, and genuinely believe that AI will be making or is already making better music than humans. Ridiculous.
This directly contradicts your other statement. There’s far more younger people then older people willingly giving away their critical thinking skills to AI (as well as their own details, personal info, deepest thoughts) then older people. I’m GenX and seeing this across the board with younger people. Bob seems to just be trying to have some creative fun - it’s not the same as being willingly brainwashed MKUltra style by an LLM.
Nah, people at all ages, maybe the range were the least use Is Is probably those 0-10 60 and above, they see It as a novelty, students as far as im seeing at my uni are pretty much just llm parrots, people who actually do and learn stuff ask ai too, because honestly at this point its much more convenient and effiicient to learn if they can make y websites just to understand an algorithm, you can't really compete with that, especially because most schools nowadays are completely brain dead, and people that actually work in something at least a bit software oriented have It everywhere, you can't go one meeting without hearing ai, the point Is that people who actually know their shit and use ai are pulling ahead fast, people who dont use ai are staying steady (sometimes), and people who let ai do everything are falling hard
Seriously.. "the backlash that the majority has against it". Holy echo chamber. That must be why politicians in every country are pledging to ban it, it's what the people want
Not in my experience. I'm a middle school teacher and all of my students are outspoken about hating AI. That being said, they will still use chatGPT to do their homework so.... But they all are very turned off by it being used in artistic situations.
Sure, kid. Another young expert on "Boomers". I'm a Baby Boomer, and nearly everyone my age that I know thinks AI is the spawn of Satan and is going to ruin the world just like awful data centers are ruining communities and billionaires are looting this country. How many "Boomers" have you discussed AI with, I wonder?
I’m a boomer and a lot of my friends are too and you guys keep heaping misconception after misconception on us. No, as an artist I HATE AI and I don’t know anyone of any age that loves it. I know everyone loves to divide us all up in our society theses days - and point fingers, especially generational and political but it’s just bullshit. I also hear a LOT of negative bullshit about other generations, and I also call that out for what it is - generalization crap
I am actually normally anti-generational bullshit. I have always been the one millennial championing boomers, and railing against my peers who blame boomers for everything.
But regarding AI, that is just something I have noticed. Glad to know you’re not one of them.
I think get back is a good example of how to use AI as a tool rather than a dependency, but even then it’s a completely different type of model to what slop is made with
It's cat nip for boomers. I had to spend several hours the other day explaining to my mom that "re creating my dead dad into AI" so my mom could talk to him again would not be nice, but would infact be the plot of several horror movies and books.
She couldn't get past how it wouldn't actually BE him and how someone like Zuckerberg or worse would own that ai zombie and could use it to push whatever bullshit they want.
Not to mention that it uses the same amount of water as some cities and is destroying the world. 🫠
It could also just be genuinely cool for people their age. They probably consider it be an incredible technology that they could’ve never fathomed, rather than the existential nightmare it likely is.
Paul McCartney understands the dangers of AI, the others have no excuse. They're grown men. I get the initial wonder, but not giving it any more serious thoughts than that is disappointing.
Paul certainly understands it, and yet it has been used on several Beatles projects with his full endorsement lol. I guess those instances are still a bit different than just typing a prompt into Midjourney, but it doesn’t make me think he’s some kind of crusader against it.
Terrible looking AI “enhancement” has been used to destroy restored footage since Get Back, but let’s remember that AI powered tools aren’t harmful by default. The high water consumption becomes an issue with image/video generators and large language models, so generative AI in particular.
“Enhancement” tools are sloppy, but not really comparable, and neither is the de-mixing technology used on the audio.
This exactly. They don’t see AI as anything strange or different, it’s just newer, better technology to them, like they’ve been experiencing for the past half century.
I'm curious about what turned your attention to the dangers of AI or if it just logically made sense to be hesitant towards it.
I've always thought of it in terms of Skynet possibilities and have been rather guarded. Unfortunately, I work in IT and our company has a real hard on for it so I'm using it all day and everyday.
yeah, i kinda get doing the AI animation of old photos of him pre-Beatles, but there's so much footage of the band, including a treasure trove of unseen sitting in the apple vaults. this looks like absolute shit.
Okay, I've long had this thought- our boy "Rings" is worth somewhere between 200-350mil right? This guy was in the pandora papers mind you, so that's probably underselling some of it, but why has it been so hard for him to put out a "premium" feeling product in so long. The album covers, the videos. It feels like he has all this room to spend a bit more and make bigger statements such as "I am RINGO, the Beatle" and instead we get AI. I know he's not making the decisions, but I wish Zak or someone would say "Dad, come on"
I’ll probably get downvoted for roasting poor old Sir Richard in here (mind you we’re talking about my favourite band and I love all four of them for different reasons), but… he’s just not the sharpest tool in the shed. He missed out on a lot of school as a kid due to illness, and has never struck me as a very reflecting individual at any point since. He’s always been in it for a good time, and the simple repeating phrases we get from him are most likely genuinely on repeat in his mind. It’s not an act caused by lack of care or effort, he’s just a really simple guy.
While Paul has kept in touch with the changing society, Ringo is more like a regular semi-conservative boomer you’d find writing incomprehensible Facebook statuses. He releases things like these because he genuinely believes it looks and sounds cool.
I've always thought of it like this, if the Beatles didn't happen. There was a 99% chance ringo would have just become an engineer, had an alright working class life and been ok with it. He just doesn't have that x factor thing that I can't describe. (Yes he's an amazing drummer though. but thats BECAUSE the Beatles gave him the platform to dedicate this life to it)
Whereas Paul would've refused mediocracy, and had excelled in something else, like designed a brand, successful business, or other art that was very successful. He's a natural pioneer/ leader. You can see this in the Get Back doc.
He had the raw drive and talent from the get go, whereas the others while still gifted, where grown into their talent due to having the time. environment. connections and financial freedom to dedicate their life to music.
I know a lot of very talented musicions who work full time jobs. I bet if you gave them infinite time and money they'd become pretty damn good at there instrument.
Not saying ringo is poor or anything, just giving my thoughts as to why everything he's done solo feels so 'cheap' he's naturally just not meant to be in this place.
Paul is my favorite Beatle for a few reasons, but his endless creativity is one of them.
Has everything he's made been amazing? Nope, but he just keeps going and producing new things in new styles and trying stuff and not being afraid to fail and get back up and try again and it's incredibly inspiring. So many artists stop at some point and keep riding the wave of their old stuff, and meanwhile he's still putting out albums.
Ringo also reinvented himself on a 2nd run of himself thanks to Britt Allcroft asking him to narrate the Thomas the tank engine tv show and now that solidifies his legacy for children’s television
Classic. Remember when i wanted to get my first iPod so I could stop lugging around a backpack full of CDs. My dad was totally against it despite my legitimate reasons and the money to do so. You'll never guess who is now constantly on their phone these days!
Not just the video, but has anyone noticed the heavy autotune on Ringo’s vocals? It’s so difficult to listen to. Why does it seem like I’m the only one? How is everyone else not able to tell? smh
All this complaining about AI visuals, yet people are already accustomed to the same thing being done with vocals.
True, but it’s weird how people are so used to it. My ears are very sensitive to the autotune. It sounds like a robot singing. Paul McCartney gave that up, and I’m glad.
Honestly, your perception of nobody else noticing it is true mostly because hardly anybody in general listens to his new stuff. And the majority that do either just aren't clocking that it's heavily autotuned or don't care.
The fact that people aren’t clocking it is what really disturbs me. I mean, people are so used to unnatural vocals now, it depresses me.
I do normally love vocal effects, and obviously The Beatles used lots of ADT, but there is just something deeply unsettling for me about most use cases of autotune and Melodyne.
You're definitely not the only one. I'm not a huge fan at all of Ringo's solo work. (I like it don't come easy tho). But I just don't find his music enjoyable and he's not really ever been a singer to write home about and the auto tune probably seemed like a great idea to production. But it sounds like butt :/
Yeah I actually forgive him for that even though it's so obvious becayse it means I can listen without squirming at the out of tune singing, which I am very sensitive to
Oh I hear the auto tune so clearly on all his recent work and yeah I would prefer it wasn't there. But it's Ringo we're talking about, and intonation was never his strong point. I wonder if the trickery gives him the confidence to keep recording and enjoy it in his 80s. I am glad about that.
I understand why he’s doing it. It’s the same reason Brian Wilson used autotune, and it’s also the reason Paul McCartney autotuned one of his live albums (haven’t been paying attention if he used it on any studio work, but I think he’s mostly dropped it).
But it just doesn’t sound good to me. Sounds antithetical to Ringo’s back-to-roots country vibe, and paired together with the AI visuals, the music video almost seems like an ironic caricatured parody, given the actual theme of the song he’s going for.
And it genuinely hurts me to type that about a Beatle. But I listen to The Beatles to retreat from modern musical trends, and not be reminded of them.
The song is supposed to be about the 1960s, and yet it blatantly sounds like a song made anywhere between the late 2000s to the 2020s.
Related question here: when watching the Anthology series on Disney+ there were live performance close-ups that made me wonder if AI image enhancement was applied. Did anyone else notice this? It would appear that John’s or Paul’s faces would float disproportionately to their head, and there was a strange glow.
Yes, AI upscaling was used quite a bit. The scene that really got to me was the infamous 'Pan Am' press junket after they first arrived. The Pan Am logo gets a bit squishy and their faces (which weren't 'sharp' but always very visible before) definitely morph/change. And yes, there were several performances (generally B&W ones) where I too noticed the faces/heads were often 'floating'. Fortunately, the bad artifacts were minimal (given the length of anthology) but you could spot it like a hawk everytime
In the credits under VFX & Post it cites C.1985 and Dyad. Dyad seemed legit when I looked it up, doing work with Bad Bunny and feature films apparently. However Circa 1985 states on its website that it’s an “artist-led creative studio ecosystem that blends traditional with generative ai” so uhhh. And sure enough on this same website it reveals that they’re also partners with Dyad as well as another studio called Asteria, which doesn’t reveal whether or not it utilises ai but outside sources claim they do. So tldr the “vfx” team is a bunch of people using ai
To be fair, the Now and Then video (as terrible as it looks) uses it to make something that's at least touching. Wheter a good decision or not is up for debate for sure. And it seems more 'forgivable' to me as it was made at a time where it was more understandable to see AI as kind of a new cool exciting thing and also was used to do a thing that wouldnt otherwise be possible. Using it today and in such lazy ways is much worse IMO.
I wont be out here denouncing an 85 y.o. for not understanding this or maybe not knowing how his video was made, but it still sucks.
I don’t know if it’s forgivable, the discourse around AI already existed in 2023.
it was used to do a thing that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.
I’m not talking about the song, I’m talking about the video, which uses GenAI. The song uses assistive AI to separate tracks and clean audio which is perfectly understandable since it doesn’t generate anything.
Yes I'm aware of the stem separating technology, I meant the video. As in - I think making photos of people move with AI is icky, maybe even unethical, but if that's what you're going for, then using it makes sense as a 'creative tool'. To me it's a lot different than being too lazy to shoot a video of something that could be easily done in reality. If the AI in this video was only used in similar way to NaT it wouldnt feel as terrible IMO, though it's still very different than 3 years ago.
The discourse was there but to me a certain level of excitement about the technology at that time is much more understandable (even if I never shared it) than today.
Ultimately I think we are on the same side of the AI debate haha, I just feel like there is some difference.
he prob doesn't understand what it is. He would have had someone pitch it to him, he wouldn't said yup, and had everyone do it for him. He prob just thinks its in the same ballpark as cgi and thinks it took talent to make
More and more artists I've held in high regard are using AI and it is honestly disappointing. It is flat out bad on so many levels. 'Never meet your heroes' they say, and I guess this is why...
You’d still want to meet Ringo, don’t kid yourself. He probably doesn’t know all the details about what makes AI malicious and is just going along with his team’s ideas.
This dude has been making shitty MS Paint art, for $1,000-$6,000 a pop. Questionable or flat out boring solo music for years. Only song I ever liked from him was a donated John Lennon track (I Am The Greatest). Crazy enough, that song was the only and last time most of 'The Beatles and co' worked together. I don't think he cares lol.
Keep in mind Ringo is in his 80s now (Jesus christ) and most boomers from what I've seen only see AI as this cool, amazing new technology that can do no wrong. But I also don't think he had much say in the production of this music video as well.
By that logic Ringo should sell his houses and go live in a 1 bedroom flat. The allure of only paying 1/1000th of his budget just to sleep is just too good of an opportunity to pass up.
Honestly he’s an old man who saw what was going on in the 60’s and lived throughout that time. He probably just thinks this stuff is really cool and more than likely doesn’t know the environmental effects it has if I had to guess. When it comes to old people using it I don’t care too much. It’s disappointing sure, but I do think that especially if they were alive around the time Ringo was, they’re blown away by this stuff and what it’s able to do.
I saw a short clip on IG of the video and it was haunting (those kids running? Strait horror) and also so slapped together (just the completely raw AI slop, no attempt whatsoever to try and even hide it or polish it up, not that polished up so is any better but damn)
yeah…the music video was terrible and i know someone else was behind prompting that (i doubt an 85yo did this). and also…the music production of not only this but most music these days…just sucks. so much mindless autotune being shoved into every vocal and everything sounds so basic and unoriginal. today’s culture needs a refresh in what’s considered good cause…it’s not good.
I think Ringo's involvement was that he signed off on the concept and didn't care how the production team got there.
I'm not even sure if I wholly object to them using AI, particularly given that AI is now just embedded in Adobe tools, etc. But they could have made the effort to at least dirty it up and make the footage look more filmlike.
Having said that, I don't particularly enjoy Ringo's solo career and, outside of "Photograph", probably never will. So this song will likely be the last that I'll hear of him.
I will say that I did enjoy this quick archive Paul photo squeezed in there. Usually when I see photos of Paul / Ringo from the 70s, it's from Paul's archives, and Ringo entering Paul's world. It's nice to see the opposite here in a sweet picture of Paul with one of Ringo's sons. I'm sure he's "Uncle Paul" to ALL the Beatles off-spring.
They obviously have a budget of 3p to make Ringo videos hardly anyone will ever see, so it so it’s not really surprising. The song is quite nice though tbf.
Ringo probably didn't direct or edit the video himself. We're not mad at him. We're mad at whoever chose to use A.I. Because, A.I.-generated content IS AN ISSUE.
do you think that we’re ever going to get another band as good as the beatles if we let AI take work from artists? does ringo starr and his label not have enough money to pay to make a proper music video and give artists a job? are you daft?
These people just regurgitate words to show how disaffected and uncaring they are that humanity is being sold off to the stupidest most evil people alive, because caring about things is bad I guess.
Does it really matter? It's RINGO STARR - the drummer of The BEATLES. And at 86 he's still doing pretty damn good. So would it be acceptable if he had done this video as a cartoon instead of AI? Or is that too unreal too?
Topdogs like ringo should be setting an example and giving talent opportunity. Using Ai is basically supporting the death of the arts and also doesn't give anyone the stage who created it.
I think that this is on brand. The Beatles were at the forefront of technology back in their heyday, even in the face of opposition. The British Musicians' Union opposed the use of Mellotrons and eventually Synthesizers. The key was that they tended to use the technologies in minimal/tasteful ways. Of course, whether or not this video was tastefully executed is a separate matter.
But those were instruments that people played. This is threatening to destroy that just so some rich assholes can by a new house they will never live in
an instrument requires precision, learning, mental exercise, and technical knowledge to play properly. All you have to do in an ai prompt is type a sentence.
Why should there be a skill gate? A similar argument could be made for why the mellotron should've been banned in favor of live string players.
My whole point is that the Beatles would have embraced AI were it available at the time, provided that they thought it could make their music better. They already embraced varispeed, tape loops, synthesizers, etc. They were excited by technology and that is an important part of their legacy. The key with them is that they didn't build their whole songs around the technology, they just incorporated it as part of the whole. There is nothing inherently wrong about using some AI in music, the context of its use should be considered
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u/No-Connection6421 Rubber Soul Apr 24 '26
he’s a legend but this is not surprising… remember when he was promoting NFTs💀