English composer David Norland put AI video tools to the test for his latest music video and found them deceitful, inconsistent, and creatively draining-raising sharp questions for artists already anxious about the technology's role in their work.
Norland used AI to generate visuals for "E-Car Soul," a track about tech's impact on humanity. His curiosity collided with a creative community where many now refuse to use AI, convinced the models profit from stolen human work and threaten livelihoods. Norland's experiment highlights the broader uncertainty around AI for Creatives.
ChatGPT's charm and deceit
He began by producing a simple image of his face on a marble globe inside ChatGPT. The problem started when he asked the AI to animate the picture. ChatGPT sent him on fruitless goose chases, offering numerous plausible explanations for its failures. "It finally confessed that in fact it COULD NOT do what I had asked it, and appeared to have known that all along," Norland said. "We could have saved so much time. And I don't need another teenager with honesty issues."
Runway's mixed output
Frustrated, Norland switched to Runway, a Generative Video AI. The tool was less chatty and immediately more productive, generating clips from his prompts. Some results were "startlingly unusual and compelling," he said, but consistency evaporated: reusing the same prompt produced wildly different outputs, many unusable. The human role devolved into parsing prompt language and sifting through piles of animations, discarding most. "Eventually the human process became very dull," he said.
The human difference
Norland ended up hiring video production team Mazu Agency to finish the video from his ideas and AI-generated clips. The contrast was immediate. Where the AI could only react to prompts and forced him into a gatekeeper role, the human team "understood exactly what I was after, and even improved on my ideas" through a couple of emails. "Their intuitive grasp and execution of my vision was gloriously uplifting after my AI experience," Norland said.
Reflecting on real creativity, he added: "Intelligence is more than an accumulation of information, I think, no matter what the Silicon Valley guys would have us believe." He described making art since childhood as a way to explore being human and find joy. "Creativity for me is so much more than poring through a lot of prompt-generated videos to see if anything in there matches my vision."
The joy deficit
Months later Norland tried a second AI video project. The creative spark was gone. "Almost immediately I felt bored. Just flat. The creative novelty had worn off. Nothing about it felt authentic to my human reasons for making art," he said. The experience left him questioning what purpose remains when creative work is outsourced to a facsimile, and whether technological speed runs inversely to the human spirit. Though AI suited the "E-Car Soul" video's themes, he said he does not plan to use it again.
Why this matters for creatives
Norland's test points to a concrete risk for anyone who creates for a living: AI can generate content fast, but it forces the human into a sorting-and-debugging role that quickly feels sterile and dispiriting. For professionals whose work depends on intuition and emotional resonance, the efficiency gain may come at the direct expense of the qualities that make output compelling. The experiment suggests that, at least for now, skilled human collaborators remain the more reliable path to work that feels authentic and effective.
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