🎧 The story behind my latest creative experiment ⋆ AI of the week ⋆ The silent dream killer

Every week while writing this email, I listen to music and dream of making it.

I combined the skills I have (writing lyrics, sense for music, video editing) and collaborated with an intelligent tool to create a piece of music I wouldn't be able to make otherwise.

AI of the week and The Silent Dream Killer come after it 🙂

Thing 1 - I wrote a song...

Eclipe United - The Z (1:39 min)

Inspired by the total solar eclipse of 2024, I wrote the initial lyrics - by hand - for this Threads post.

The conversation spiraled so I decided to extend it a bit - using a collage of GPT-4 outputs. Then I spent a few hours experimenting with the newly-launched Udio (check Thing 2) to get the sound I liked.

It's a creative process of prompting, adjusting lyrics, and mixing. Nowhere near the creative freedom or quality you'd get from working with the usual tools, but it's a lot faster.

It took me another hour or 2 to edit the video in DaVinci Resolve with royalty-free clips.

I didn't get the exact sound I wanted from Udio - it would be great if I could get, say, an LMMS project and edit further - but... without it, you wouldn't get to listen to this at all.

Please reply to this email and let me know what you think once you listen to it! 🙏

Thing 2 - AI of the week

• Meta introduced the next generation of MTIA (Meta Training and Inference Accelerator) - a.k.a. chips that run AI

Screenshot from Meta AI website

• AutoCodeRover is an open-source project-structure-aware autonomous software engineer aiming for autonomous program improvement
• Google Gemini 1.5 Pro is now available in 180+ countries with native audio understanding, system instructions, JSON mode, and more
• OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo with Vision is now available in the API (developers can use it to make things)
• OpenAI released new GPT-4 Turbo - available to paid users - and it tops the competition in coding

• Udio introduced an app for music creation and sharing that allows you to generate amazing music in your favorite style (see example in Thing 1)

Thing 3 - Fearless Futures and The Silent Dream Killer

Your biggest enemy is the version of yourself that is addicted to the comfort of not taking any risk.

- Orange Book

Unlike most people, I find getting a 9-5 job a sign of pursuing comfort. I have friends who never had a 9-5 job before and are trying to get one soon - and I'm fighting tooth and nail to help them find an alternative.

Taking risks is a sign of self-respect.

You know your time here is limited, and you simply choose to make the most out of it instead of being scared of living.

- Orange Book

Regular income is addictive. It supports your standard of living and creates dependence. It's hard to cut off on purpose. It's much easier if you don't create that dependence in the first place.

This path also feels much riskier and a lot fewer people take it.

Cheers, Zvonimir