On Monday, aespa dropped the first of many music videos for their upcoming "Armageddon" album. The MV, for the song "Supernova", is not only alot of fun to watch but it also had something extra interesting in it. Near the end of the video is a scene (~2:43) that resulted in being weird or jarring for some people.
Their reaction is understandable because it's not every day that you see a video that looks like a picture where only one small part of it is moving. However it is something that I'm used to seeing as the technique is very common in the AI-generated video space (ex. Harry Potter by Balenciaga), so for me it was less of a shocker and more of a pleasant surprise.
Generative AI is all the rage these days but to my knowledge it's only had a miniscule presence in Kpop thus far. The only other example that immediately comes to mind is ARTMS using it for their "Dall" teasers.
Before anyone gets upset at SM over this, the technique isn't new or even specific to the AI community. It's called cinemagraph (cinemagraphy?) and it comes from the photography community. Not only can it be used for lip syncing to audio, but also for a wide variety of other things as well. For example, when Seolhyun was still in AOA, she did some CFs for GMarket, many of which were cinemagraphs or in a similar vein.
In the seven years since the GMarket CFs I'm actually kind of surprised that we haven't seen cinemagraphs used more. Maybe companies know that it's just too weird for some people? Perhaps SM finally found a way to use that to their advantage? In "Supernova" there is a scene 38 seconds into the MV where the same cinemagraph images are used for solving a captcha that reads "select all images with AI". The fan theory goes that it's okay for the cinemagraph scene to be weird, because it's supposed to be off as it's representing some kind of metaverse AI instead of aespa themselves.
So given that the AI industry continues to make crazy strides, including generating high quality video, are we likely also to see it gaining a larger presence in Kpop MVs? I'm not sure since most of Kpop is all about the human element. I say most because animated idols have been making inroads into the industry such as PLAVE, RE:VERSE, and Apoki.
At the same time, I also wouldn't be surprised if AI-generated video ends up becoming more common. I mentioned animated idols, and while I don't know if they'll flock to AI, it remains a fact that aespa has their own animated connection. naevis, aespa's virtual AI companion, is set to have her own solo later this year, and fitting generative AI into an AI's music video could work out really well. Maybe it won't be weird or jarring then, and that'll be enough for companies to expand its use.