Don Diablo AI Music Video Took 214 Hours to Create
Don Diablo's AI-generated Top Of My Game music video took around 1,122 generations and 214 hours to complete, its director has revealed.
An AI-generated music video for international DJ Don Diablo took approximately 214 hours of work and more than 1,100 image and video generations to complete, despite the finished production running for less than four minutes.
Director David Bianchi has revealed the extensive production process behind Top Of My Game, created for Don Diablo's drum and bass project Control Alt Delete.
The video was released on 18 September 2026, but a newly published production breakdown has revealed how the filmmaker struggled with everything from crowd movements to car doors and illuminated clothing.
Bianchi estimates that the finished video required 1,122 generations, with a three-person team involved by the final stages.
What happens in the music video?
The story follows a mysterious figure travelling through a city, attracting the attention of people who gradually join him.
The audience does not discover the character's identity until the closing moments, when he is revealed as Don Diablo.
Bianchi designed the production around crowded urban locations, including a tunnel, market and bridge, before bringing the characters together for the final sequence.
The director wanted to create the scale of a major live-action production, with hundreds of people gathering in the same environment.
He estimates that filming an equivalent video using conventional methods could have cost between $1.5 million and $2 million, although that is his own projection rather than a verified production budget.
Watch the video:
Why did the AI video take so much work?
Bianchi used image-generation tools including Nano Banana and Seedream to develop the visual appearance of characters and locations, before creating moving sequences with Seedance 2.5.
However, the technology did not consistently produce the results he needed. During scenes featuring a crowd marching through the city, some generated characters walked in the wrong direction, creating continuity problems.
Another sequence involving a car required repeated attempts because the driver kept emerging through the wrong door, while the vehicle's movements created other visual errors.
Bianchi eventually used conventional editing to resolve the sequence. The team also struggled to produce a convincing glow around the logo on Don Diablo's jacket, requiring numerous additional generations.
Other details, including street signs and vehicle registration plates, needed correcting through traditional visual effects software.
What's next for the director?
Bianchi, who is also an actor, writer and producer, founded Exertion Films and has worked on projects including the science fiction series RZR.
Following the Don Diablo production, he has been developing additional AI projects, including a short-form series called Bobby Sales. He has also discussed creating further videos with Don Diablo rather than treating Top Of My Game as a one-off collaboration.
The experience offers an insight into the amount of creative decision-making involved in AI filmmaking, with the final three-minute production requiring weeks of development, repeated generation and substantial manual editing.
