Ciclope 2025: Wake me up before you promo.

10 October 2025

AI reared its head at the 'Who Killed the Music Video? And What Comes Next…' panel hosted by Rebecca Roundtree and featuring Theresa Adebiyi, Martín Piroyansky, and Keith Schofield.

At the penultimate talk of Ciclope Festival 2025 (time flies when you're having a good time or maybe lost all sense of it), Caviar director Keith Schofield told attendees at 'Who Killed the Music Video? And What Comes Next…' that he's "not an advocate of AI" but still had a jolly good time adding "meat and goo" to one of his signature promos: 'Heaven Can Wait' for Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck.

The audience got two versions for the price of one: the 2009 original, and a new cut made with the help of Topaz. This was the "AI-enhanced version" (that's what the interstitial told us anyway) with enough fleshy eyesores to populate Silent Hill. DAVID heard a couple gasp in horror when a character reached around to touch the back of her head, only to reveal a fleshy maw beneath her hair. The less said about the cow that produces unholy Cheestrings from its udder, the better.

The "AI-enhanced version" of 'Heaven Can Wait' provides food for thought.

Schofield, however, wanted viewers to "embrace the AI sloppiness" of it all, to immerse themselves in "ugly and tacky nightmares that kinda make you laugh". The audience did laugh at points, but in a 'maybe if I laugh, Beck's melted face won't haunt my dreams for the rest of time' sort of way. His fellow panellists—video commissioner Theresa Adebiyi and Argentine director Martín Piroyansky—acknowledged AI as a tool, but thought it best not to pick a side.

As this unusual talk drew to a close, Schofield, whether he intended to do so or not, chose John Lennon's birthday (October 9) to, er, imagine a world where every Beatles song had a music video thanks to AI. Maybe Peter Jackson's 'Now and Then' was only the tip of the iceberg.