Wu-Tang Clan's New Music Video Is Extremely AI-Generated

As Wu-Tang Clan rose from hardscrabble obscurity to become one of the most influential rap acts of the 1990s, there was never any doubt that the group's signature blend of real life storytelling and epic fiction was the product of human creativity — but late in their career, that's clearly changed.

Directed by filmmaker Jason Zada, the clip for "Mandingo," the latest from the legendary Staten Island crew, features the group's classic tropes: kung fu aesthetics, swordplay, and a gritty reimagining of New York City as a canvas for fantastical mythmaking.

The biggest difference between "Mandingo" and everything that came before it, however, is how it was made. According to the video's director, it was created entirely with Google's DeepMind Veo 2, a text-to-video generator that's — unfortunately — just as wonky and wobbly as other video-generating tools we've seen.

Case in point: throughout the video, the face of the protagonist keeps shifting ever so slightly, making him look like different men at various points throughout the clip. The same can be said of his sultry female accomplice, whose hair changes length repeatedly over the course of the video's four-and-a-half minutes.

As the hero battles his way through what's presumably Shaolin, the mythical world built by the Wu-Tang Clan's founding members when they were martial arts film-obsessed lads on Staten Island, he encounters bad guys young and old. Somehow, the sloppiness evidenced in Mandingo's appearance and movements seems even worse with the video's villains, and the fights contain the same physics-defying choppiness we've seen in other video generators before.

While beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder, many who beheld the "Mandingo" music video saw it as little more than AI slop. From calling the clip "janky as shit" to suggesting they regret buying tickets to the group's upcoming farewell tour, fans were none too pleased.

"Wu-Tang dropped a video for their newest single and the entire thing is in AI," complained one user on Threads. "It looks ugly, featureless, full of glaring errors, and lacked any sort of spirit or emotion."

"I don't know whose idea it was, because everything in the video could have been done with practical effects," that user continued. "It's not like they can't afford it."

The group's de facto leader, Robert "RZA" Diggs, 2023 defended the use of AI in music when speaking to Rolling Stone in 2023.

"AI is a powerful thing, and it should be just another tool for us," Diggs said in the interview. "It should be just like the ASR, the MPC, Pro Tools, or Ableton — another tool used to get musical creative ideas expressed, captured, and then make the best song that we can that make people dance, laugh, become inspired or introspective."

"But if it becomes something that makes the song for you, I think there’s a danger in that," he continued. "And I think the danger in it is not immediate, but in the long term, that natural human quality of inspiration that we can’t actually define [may lessen]. I don’t think computers have reached the level of definition of that."

Zada, the video's director, does offer some clues, citing Danny Hastings, the collective's longtime creative director who seems to be something of an AI enthusiast himself — per the six-fingered hands and messy tribute videos he has posted on his Instagram.

We've reached out to Zada and the group's press department to ask about the process that went into making the "Mandingo" music video and whether either has a response to criticisms calling it "AI slop."

One thing's for sure: the group has produced a variety of lavish and epic music videos over the years using humans, cameras, and special effects — so it feels weird to see them leaning into such an easy route.

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