American rock band OK Go has alleged Apple of copying the concept behind their latest music video and using it for a short film shown at the company's highly anticipated iPhone 6 launch event on Tuesday, reports Bloomberg Businessweek.
The event's lead-in video, titled "Perspective," consists of a long shot navigating a white room and in the process shows initially randomly shaped objects that yield inspirational words when the camera assumes a different angle.
Apple said the video is a tribute to people "who have always seen things differently."
OK Go's manager, Andy Gershon, said the idea behind the presentation isn't different at all from OK Go's video for their song "The Writing's on the Wall," which won in this year's MTV Video Music Awards for visual effects.
The music video also consists of a long shot that produces words and familiar imagery out of random figures and vice versa.
Gershon admitted that the artistic scheme behind the video could inspire others to make a similarly themed film and the band would have no problem with it. This was not the case with Apple, according to the manager.
He said the band had a discussion with the tech giant in April regarding their idea for a music video and potentially working together on it. The company declined, and OK Go proceeded to make the video nevertheless.
As it turned out, Apple enlisted 1stAveMachine, the production company with which the band worked on the "The Writing's on the Wall" video, to make a video the launch event, said Vulture. Apple also hired the same director.
"The videos speak for themselves, and you can draw your own conclusion," said Gershon.
As noted by Billboard, the creative concept behind both OK Go's video and Apple's presentation draws from the work of Swiss artist Felice Varini, who is known for his perspective-localized paintings.
Apple, meanwhile, has been accused of stealing others' ideas a number of times in the past.
Hip hop duo Run the Jewels claimed in July that the tech company ripped of their logo for its "Stickers" ad campaign. In 2006, Ben Gibbard of The Postal Company said Apple borrowed excessively from one of their music videos for a TV advertisement.
