Bebe Rexha and PNAU's new AI-generated music video is a neon-fried nightmare

Whether you land on the Grimes end or the Sean Penn end of the continuum, AI-generated creative output appears here and ready to stay. From AI Drake songs to AI movie trailers, the technology has swiftly and successfully infiltrated the industry. While some artists are decrying AI as a devaluing threat to human creativity, others are leaping directly into the uncanny valley, faces fully beat.

Case in point: pop star Bebe Rexha, who this morning debuted the fully-AI generated music video for her song “Stars” with PNAU and Ozuna. Rexha first announced the track music video with a short clip shared to her Twitter. But nothing—not even the experimentations of largely-disavowed South African shock-rap duo Die Antwoord—could prepare this writer for the full version, a neon-fried futuristic nightmare with the visual effect of riding a rollercoaster after a full day in the sun.

The video, which attempts to capitalize on the uniquely warped and transformative AI “aesthetic,” feels designed to numb the unassuming viewer into submission (or alternatively, kill a person on LSD). Both Rexha and Ozuna appear in the video, commanding attention as best they can until their faces morph and melt into alien beings or strange multi-faced facsimiles evoking some sort of hyperpop-pilled Tomie. Set in a universe that vaguely echoes the well-loved “society if…” Twitter meme, the AI-generated footage boomerangs through the genuinely upsetting world, which appears to be ruled by long-limbed expressionless robots, bug-like machines, and faceless women in pink suits.

Although the lyrics of the song mercilessly hammer home a connection between AI and limitless imagination (the chorus begins: “Face in to creation/ Imagination will release your soul”), the video feels like a strategy to distract from the song itself, which is not good. If anything, the only comforting sentiment out of this release is that Rexha and Ozuna do not actually exist in this overstimulating purgatory.

“Stars” may not come close to reinventing the wheel, but the fearsome graphics of its accompanying video are potent enough to trigger some nostalgia for a time when the world was new, and the wheel was literally being invented. Where is Bill and Ted’s time-traveling phone booth when you need it the most?