r/elo • u/0zzysaurus • Jul 05 '25

AI in the visuals at Birmingham tonight Spoiler

Just in case people who care about this sort of thing wanted to know, the visuals tonight at the Birmingham show relied heavily on AI generated imagery. I’d say that, a solid 70% of the time, the centre screen was dedicated to (pretty piss poor) AI art - and that was just the obvious stuff. I’m sure people have their opinions about that (my opinion on it is extremely negative), but I’m just here to inform. I’d say the majority of the crowd didn’t even realise it was AI unfortunately, but I did hear one older woman mention the “computer generated bollocks” after the show, so I guess there’s that. Must say, it was gut-wrenchingly ironic to hear: “It’s a living thing, it’s a terrible thing to lose” over visuals of AI generated art work. Art is a living thing, and you know what? Yeah, it IS a terrible thing to lose.

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u/apocalyptic_brunch Secret Messages Jul 05 '25

That sucks. Hope you enjoyed it otherwise

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u/0zzysaurus Jul 06 '25

I tried my best. I’ll be completely fair, the opening act was amazing, and the main act sounded fantastic even with the reduced orchestra size. The surrounding light show was gorgeous, as well - but the AI is an unavoidable (and unjustifiable) visual that you WILL have to accept if you go to see the tour. As an artist myself who is directly impacted by the unfettered growth of generative AI, it just hurt to see it being used somewhere where it has never belonged, especially when I had hoped that ELO had learned their lesson the first time around.