Washed Out's new music video was created with AI. Is it a watershed moment for Sora?

"The Hardest Part," a new song from indie pop artist Washed Out, is all about love lost, among the most human of themes.

But ironically, to illustrate the tune's sense of longing, the musician turned to something far less flesh-and-blood: artificial intelligence.

With Thursday's release of "The Hardest Part," Macon, Georgia-based Washed Out, whose real name is Ernest Greene, has the first collaboration between a major music artist and filmmaker on a music video using OpenAI's Sora text-to-video technology, according to the singer-songwriter's record label Sub Pop.

The roughly four-minute video, directed by Paul Trillo, speedily zooms the viewer through key elements of a couple's life. The audience sees the characters — a red-haired woman and a dark-haired man — go from making out and smoking in a 1980s high school to getting married and having a child. "Don't you cry, it's all right now," Greene croons. "The hardest part is that you can't go back."

The couple aren't played by real actors. They're created entirely digitally through Sora's AI.

The video could mark the beginning of a potentially groundbreaking trend of using AI in video production.

"I think where we are now — that's about to explode, and so I look forward to being able to incorporate some of this brand-new technology and seeing how that informs what I can come up with," Greene said in an interview. "So, if that's pioneering, I would love to be part of that."

"The Hardest Part" — the lead single from Greene's new self-produced album, "Notes From a Quest Life," set for release on June 28 — is the longest music video made through Sora technology so far. The program creates short clips based on written text prompts. This enabled Trillo to build scenes in a way that would've been many times more expensive with actual actors, sets and locations.

"Not having the limitations of budget and having to travel to different locations, I was able to explore all these different, alternate outcomes of this couple's life," Trillo said.

Trillo is one of the creatives who has early access to Sora, which is not yet publicly available. OpenAI unveiled Sora in February and has been testing the system with directors and meeting with Hollywood executives and producers. It's working out kinks and trying to address intellectual property concerns.

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