Right now, AI is stirring up fierce debates — careers are being derailed, games are being banned or stripped of awards… in short, all hell seems to be breaking loose. This will eventually calm down, though, because AI really does help get many things done faster and better. No, it won’t replace a living human being — but it can be a powerful aid.
And riding this very wave, animator Oleg Kuvaev, the creator of the legendary Masyanya, has started making videos using artificial intelligence. He has even shared behind-the-scenes fragments showing that AI is just a tool — and that there’s still a tremendous amount of work involved. But what Oleg has managed to demonstrate is how this tool, in the hands of a talented creator, can help bring yet another series of wonderful works to life.
And at this point, Oleg decided to focus specifically on animated music videos. They all look great, but some of them really hit hard. There are plenty of AI-related imperfections — you can clearly see that this isn’t finely polished, fully hand-crafted work. But the lyrics, the performance, the musicality, the raw emotional tension — Oleg managed to pull all of that together and reveal new facets of his talent. I even added a few of the tracks to my playlist with genuine pleasure — Until, for example (see below).
And I’d like to share what I consider the very best of these works (most of them are made by Oleg in English).
I’ll start with People Against AI — it’s directly about all the fears that artificial intelligence will replace us (or already is). And it’s absolutely brilliant:
Until was actually the first track through which I discovered this new creative direction of Oleg’s. The lyrics feel so painfully contemporary that it’s almost unsettling — like realizing we’ve truly crossed into an era of profound change. And here you can already see that Oleg has a much better grasp of how to work with AI as a tool, rather than letting it dictate the result:
The same theme is actually continued in What a Poisonous World, though it’s done in a completely different style and mood:
А последней я хочу показать единственную русскоязычную песню в этой подборке. Песня “Пусть всегда” использует мелодию другой известной песни из нашего детства, которая для меня всегда пронзительным гимном миру в противовес войне, а теперь за слова из этой песни в России дают людям реальные сроки. What a Poisonous World!, словами прошлой песни. Но текст этой новой песни Олега полностью противоположен той песне из моего детства: пусть всегда летят ракеты, пусть всегда будет царь наш, пусть НИКОГДА НЕ БУДУ Я.
And lastly, I want to share the only Russian-language song in this selection. Пусть всегда (Let it always) uses the melody of another well-known song from our childhood — one that, for me, was always a piercing hymn to peace in opposition to war. Today, in Russia, people are actually given real prison sentences for quoting lines from that song. What a Poisonous World!, to borrow the words of the previous track. But the lyrics of Oleg’s new song are the complete inverse of that childhood anthem: let rockets always fly, let our tsar always reign, let there NEVER BE ME.
But honestly, almost all of them are worth watching. The full playlist of Oleg’s AI experiments is available here: AI Music Videos
