Artificial Intelligence: From Dream to Reality (Seedream v2.0)

from seedream's official website

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been dominating the headlines. Whether it is the abundance of investments and skyrocketing prices for computer parts to the janky AI generated videos to what they look like now... I think we can all agree, the progress that AI has made in video generation is not only impressive, but transformative in a lot of different ways.

More than likely you've caught wind of the viral video of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise fighting over sensitive political issues happening in the USA. Politics aside, early renditions of AI generated video were often compared to nightmare fuel rather than a fever dream. Those dreams have materialized with the release of Seedream 2.0 by Bytedance. The uncanny quality of the video, along with the political humor attached to it, really sets a new bar to video generation. This Seedream 2.0 video demonstration was destined to go viral for all the right reasons.

DISCLAIMER: This blog posts is not an endorsement on any particular AI technology that exists, along with political commentary. However, we should note that developments such as these in AI technology gray the lines between sometimes desperate topics. As AI develops and improves, we should also take note about he AI can impact these seemingly desperate topics, especially with video, where AI generated content can be indistinguishable from real content. Pontificating on the moral, ethical, and implications of AI usage to any degree is outside the scope of this blog post. This post is acknowledging the rapid pace of AI development and just post a general observation and opinion about it. (Also, the blog post was NOT generated by AI, although searches were conducted using available browser search tools possibly using AI. The first and final drafts of this blog post was written yesterday. 😄)

from @NoRulesFilmSchool posts of the Brad Pitt vs Tom Cruise short video 

Over the weekend, after watching the Brad Pitt versus Tom Cruise video on YouTube, I set out to learn more about how it compares to other AI generated videos from YouTube personalities more dialed in with using these tools. Whatever YouTube recommended to watch, I watched it. The YouTubers compared the AI generated content by using the same prompts across all the competing AI tools and optimizing multiple iterations to get hopefully get the results they wanted. While not objective, the general opinion across most of the YouTubers, concluded that most of the AI generated videos came from Seedream 2.0 compared to Google's Veo, OpenAI's Sora, and Kling.

An interesting development when researching this topic and a little bit of a digression to it, one of the AI search tools for a browser that I used would not (refused) to do an AI summary on the phrase, "direct competitors to seedream" when using Brave's Leo AI search, contrasted by Google's Gemini AI search having no issues. There is no conclusive reason why this might be the case and also the first time I've encountered this but it is something to make a note of. Regardless, here are the main competitors to Seedream:

• Google Veo/ Nano Banana
• OpenAI Sora
• Kuaishou Technology Kling
• Midjourney

The way the Youtubers benchmarked the quality of the AI generated content was based on, how well the AI adhered to the prompts, minimal AI jank, general realism, and quality of the video generated. Some of the quality side of looking it at the results can be subjective, where one could argue that a tool was better than the others. Getting back to the Brad Pitt versus Tom cruise video, on it's own merit, succeeded and exceeded expectations of what could be produced and how we interpret potential outcomes of AI and the future of video creation...

We can always anticipate the media/news/ and even YouTube commentators sensationalizing ANY TOPIC for the sake of attention. Whether or not they talk about "Doom and Gloom", as often is the case, or "celebrating" the advent of AI, it is safe to say that AI is not going away. AI is/will impact different areas of our lives, industries, and our perception of the world. We all have conflicting views about AI development. On the one hand, we can be pessimistic and proceed with reservation and caution and the other, embrace the ebbs and flows of the moving tide. Either way, we are asleep at the wheel, dreaming, or we face reality as it is even if we can't distinguish if it is artificial or not.