During a recent chat with Wikimetal, Within Temptation’s Sharon Den Adel talked about the benefits of integrating AI in music-making.
The band used AI technology to produce the music videos for their latest singles, ‘Bleed Out’ and ‘Wireless.’ When asked if she and her bandmates worried about the potential risks of AI before deciding to use it for their video production, Den Adel said:
“Well, yes, very much, because I understand the concerns, and I hope there will be a law soon to guide everyone to what’s allowed and what’s not allowed because sometimes it’s not very obvious what the dangers are and that will help people to make the right decision, I guess. For us, it is a tool that we love, especially because of the fact that it gives so much opportunity, and a lot of times, it would not be…”
Detailing their experience of including AI in their efforts, the singer continued:
“It’s very expensive to do what we did actually now normally, and it still was a very expensive video, though it may not look like one… We were very happy how it turned out because it became a very new type of video for us, something that we would not be able to afford because it takes so much time. And also money-wise, it’s very expensive to make something like that similar, an animation like that.”
She also explained what they aimed to do with using it:
“We always wanted it, and this is the first time that, with a tool like this, it’s still even possible. And we wanted to have like a painting coming to life, and that’s what we tried to do. And it worked out like that. But like I said, the lip sync is something that needs to be worked on in the future; that’s something that AI is not very good at. So on that point, that’s a little bit less beautiful.”
Working with AI was also a similar process for Within Temptation in some ways, as Sharon further noted:
“But on the other hand, we did everything in the same way that we normally do. We use the same group of people, worked with the same people, I mean. And so we had the director, we wrote the storyline together. There were actors who were filmed, the band was filmed, everybody was filmed like we normally do, but the only thing is we added someone to it, to the team; that’s the AI specialist.”
The rocker thinks that AI could also be beneficial in other areas. She lastly said:
“And, of course, there’s a lot of things to still figure out what to do with AI in the future. But I think there’s a lot of upside, not just in the art way, but also in hospitals, like finding certain cures for certain things — not cures, but maybe problems, like scans and everything; it goes easier with AI, for instance, than it normally would with a lot of people, which is more expensive.”
Within Temptation’s upcoming eighth studio album, ‘Bleed Out’ is set for release on October 20. Following the title track and ‘Wireless,’ their latest single, ‘Ritual,’ arrived on September 29.
You can watch her full interview below.