One thing is already changing pop culture forever. This is how
Jonathan Abrams
Artists created by artificial intelligence are at the top of the iTunes and Billboard charts. Podcast hosts speak fluently for hours in languages they don’t know. Deceased celebrities were brought back to life and filled social media feeds.
For years, artificial intelligence was seen as a disruption on the horizon. It arrived in 2025 in tangible ways, large and small. Here are a few examples of how AI has intersected with popular culture over the past year.
Oscar season controversy
Producers of the movie 2024 in January brutalist He revealed that lead actors Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones partnered with a software company to improve their Hungarian accents.
The epic drama, which tells the story of a Hungarian-Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust and rebuilds his life as an immigrant in America, was an awards season favorite. The statement regarding the film’s use of artificial intelligence came to light before the Oscars and became a major topic of discussion; Nominated for best picture but dropped AnoraBrody took home the best actor award.
In April, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences clarified its stance on the use of artificial intelligence and digital tools that “neither help nor harm the chances of being nominated.”
The uproar surprised Holly Willis, who teaches at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and compared the enhancements to normal post-production touch-ups.
“It overlooks the fact that cinema is all about augmentation, from lighting to coloring to the ways sound is recorded, shifted and altered in post-production,” Willis said.
Musicians created by artificial intelligence are achieving success
Over the summer, a new group called Velvet Sundown gained momentum, reaching over 1 million streams on Spotify in just a few weeks. It was an impressive figure for an unknown act. In July, it was revealed that the band was not actually a band, but “a synthetic musical project composed, performed and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence, under the guidance of the human creative side.”
The statement raised issues over legitimacy and whether it had to inform listeners about whether the music they were listening to was artificially produced.
Spotify released a statement in September saying it was trying to reduce the amount of “AI degradation” on its service, among other efforts to tighten its AI policy.
However, the outputs from artificial intelligence have proliferated.
in November, Walk My WalkA song from an AI-generated project called Breaking Rust topped Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales Chart, and an AI-generated musician named Solomon Ray led iTunes’ top 100 Christian and gospel albums chart. Also in October, traditional hitmaker Timbaland introduced his latest protégé. Artificial Intelligence pop singer TaTa Taktumi. “This is what I call artist development, reimagined,” said the producer New York Times.
A new Wizard of Oz show
Should the classics remain untouched and remain artifacts of the time in which they were created? Or should new technology be adopted as a way to make these classics relevant to new generations? At the center of these questions The Wizard of Oz The run began at the Sphere in Las Vegas in August.
Sphere Entertainment Co. spent an estimated US$80 million ($119 million) to modernize the 1939 musical, working with Google to make the film large enough to fit on a screen that circles and rises above the audience, among other changes. For example, Judy Garland’s Dorothy is now seen with legs in a scene that was previously a close-up. Voices heard only off-screen were now spoken by visible people.
“I think we need to understand this as a film adaptation,” said Dominic Lees, an associate professor of film production at the University of Reading in Britain. “You can make a really good argument here that the AI is adapting a pre-existing movie into something that mostly resembles the original movie but is greatly expanded.”
Podcast hosts clone their voices
Building a loyal podcast audience has traditionally been a byproduct of familiarity between the host and listeners.
The same technology behind popular chatbots can now take some of the hard work out of podcasters. “Server copies are already being used to enhance or even modify in-studio performances and translate parts into other languages.” Times Reporter Reggie Ugwu was found.
The risk is that hosts could alienate the fan bases they’ve worked so hard to build. “This completely undermines the art form,” said the show’s host Nate DiMeo. Memory Palacehe said to Ugwu. “What you’re listening to is a window into someone else’s consciousness. That’s the whole game.”
“Some prominent podcasters tried it and then decided to drop it, and the big podcasters are really shying away from it, and it comes down to general issues around trust: Will the audience trust this kind of action?” he said.
Dead celebrities fill social media feeds
The debate over artificially created videos featuring deceased celebrities is just beginning.
In September, OpenAI released the Sora 2 AI Video Generator. The AI research firm bans the creation of videos featuring living people, but social networks have been flooded with deepfakes of dead celebrities ranging from Tupac Shakur to Bob Ross.
Zelda Williams, the daughter of actor Robin Williams, pleaded with online users in October to stop sending her father AI-generated videos.
“You’re not making art, you’re making disgusting, overly processed hot dogs out of human life and the history of art and music, and then you shove them down someone else’s throat hoping they’ll give you some approval and like it,” he wrote. “Gross.”
Meet Tilly Norwood
The September introduction of Tilly Norwood, a realistic-looking, AI-generated actress, sparked concerns about job displacement in Hollywood.
The digital character was introduced as screen-ready by creator Eline Van der Velden, who was in talks to sign a contract with a talent agency. In response to criticism, Van der Velden said Norwood was created not as a replacement for human actors but as another tool for storytelling.
“To be clear, ‘Tilly Norwood’ is not an actress, but a character created without permission or compensation by a computer program trained on the work of countless professional actors,” the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists said in a statement. he said.
“We’ve had virtual influencers for years, and it’s part of the existing internet culture,” Willis said. “When you have someone who seems as human as Tilly Norwood, it really got the acting community thinking about what our future might hold.”
The best filmmakers have their say
Towards the end of the year, some famous directors opposed the use of artificial intelligence in films.
“Artificial intelligence, especially generative AI – I’m not interested and never will be,” said Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro, who directed the Netflix adaptation of Netflix. Frankensteinhe told NPR. “I’m 61 and hope to remain disinterested in using it until it croaks.”
James Cameron, known for his pioneering use of visual effects, told ComicBook that generative AI was not used in his latest film: Avatar: Fire and Ash.
“I’m not negative about generative AI,” Cameron said. “I just wanted to point out that we don’t use that. avatar movies. We honor and celebrate the players. We don’t change players. This too will find its own level. I think Hollywood will police itself on this issue. “We’ll find our way through this.”
Disney reached a major agreement
In December, Disney announced it would buy a US$1 billion ($1.49 billion) stake in OpenAI, allowing its famous characters to appear on the company’s short-form video platform Sora, becoming the first major Hollywood studio to align itself with an AI company.
The settlement comes after Disney, along with Universal, sued Midjourney, an AI image generator, in June, alleging that it trained its software and allowed users to “explicitly combine and copy Disney’s and Universal’s famous characters.”
This deal will now allow users to create videos featuring these characters, including from Disney movies. Toy Story And Frozenalong with animated versions of characters from Marvel properties and Star Wars movies.
