writes:This project began as an experiment. Sonauto is capable of generating both lyrics and songs simultaneously. My observation was that it also seemed capable of independently accessing information on subjects, in addition to whatever information I gave it.
So I simply asked it to generate a song about the battle of the Monitor and the Virginia. It did so, coming up with a pair of songs using the same AI-generated lyrics. I was fine with the lyric structure, but I rewrote about half of the lyrics.
For example, it mentioned the Cumberland in the middle of the song, rather than in the beginning. I changed the chorus to contrast the two ironclads. And does anything rhyme with 'Hampton Roads'? 
The final lyrics were:
[Verse 1]
Iron ship
Gray salt spray
A nation holds its breath today
Black coal smoke choking out the morning sun
Hampton Roads is bleeding out
Virginia fires
She fires
And fires again
The Cumberland is sinking to the bottom zone
The wooden walls are splintering like dry bone
[Chorus]
Iron on iron
Fire on fire
A great beast of metal, heavy in the draft
Iron on iron
Fire on fire
Confronted by a nimble cheesebox on a raft
[Verse 2]
Erickson's invention
Rotating attention
The cheese box turns with intention
Worden watches through a narrow slit of sight
Buchanan fires!
Fires!
Fires!
Iron skin
Deflected
Rejected
Two ironclads, their blows circumflected
[Chorus]
Iron on iron
Fire on fire
A great beast of metal, heavy in the draft
Iron on iron
Fire on fire
Confronted by a nimble cheesebox on a raft
[Bridge]
No rounds left to fire
Both crews shocked and tired
Now warships are harder
Now warships are colder
Now warships are louder
[Verse 3]
Stalemate
Draw the line
The turret turns in jagged time
Neither one can break the skin of hammered plate
Steam hissing
Hissing
Hissing
Only God knows what the future bodes
Iron
Solid
Heavy
The Age of Oak has died in Hampton Roads
[Chorus]
Iron on iron
Fire on fire
A great beast of metal, heavy in the draft
Iron on iron
Fire on fire
Confronted by a nimble cheesebox on a raft
[Outro]
Iron on the waves
No one had to die today
But nothing will ever be the same again.
Sonauto had some problems pronouncing Captain Worden's name, but got it right in the end.
The music style was:
In the style of a folk song
And the music tags the AI selected were 'contemporary folk, 2020s, stomp and holler, mandolin, roots rock, acoustic guitar, folk rock, indie folk, americana'.
It didn't take long to come up with a song that I really liked.
I then argued with Nano Banana to come up with somewhat accurate art. First, it wanted to surround the ironclads with many other wooden ships. When I asked it to remove the ships, it removed the riverbanks too! It incorrectly put a US flag on the rear casemate of the Virginia, but when I asked it to correct its error, it just added a Confederate flag to the front casemate of the Virginia! So I asked it to eliminate the aft flag, which it did. There were multiple splashes as if the Monitor was firing a machinegun, so I asked it to remove those. It wanted to have every gun on the Virginia firing, and it took several tries to get it to stop firing guns that didn't face the Monitor. At that point, I said, 'close enough.' I'm not sure if the Monitor would have used the turret 'hat' in battle, and I'm not sure about all the black smoke coming from the turret, or the white smoke on the far side of the Virginia… I was tired fighting with the AI!
Caption files were created for English, French, German, Spanish and Tagalog.
The final step was to combine the music with titles, using ClipChamp:
I particularly like how this one came out, except for the art problems.
I've posted the video as a reel on the TMP Facebook page. You can see English, French, Spanish and Tagalog captions with the Facebook version.