Did Will Smith Use AI to Generate Fake Fans for His Tour?
World-renowned Hollywood star Will Smith is being accused of using AI to promote his ongoing summer tour. The artist – who kicked off his tour in Scarborough, England – shared a video on his official YouTube channel featuring cheering crowds and emotional shots of his fans.
The clip has been garnering the attention of sharp-eyed netizens who have spotted what are believed to be AI-generated anomalies throughout the 59-second video. Although, I must say, you wouldn’t need the sharpest of eyes to tell that something was amiss, particularly toward the end of the clip.
At about the 54-second mark, we see overhead footage of a large crowd. However, zoom in a little closer and you’ll find suspiciously warped faces and limbs that just don’t look right. Take this still frame from a screenshot that we’ve captured, and take a peek at the green circles where we found a few eyebrow-raising distortions.
Not only are the faces unhuman-like, they look like they’re morphing into each other – a characteristic of AI-generated renders that are still yet to be ironed out. In another instance, we also spotted an oddly shaped hand that lends weight to the AI-crowd narrative:
We have plenty more to say about the unnatural facial expressions of the crowd, but we wouldn’t want to step on any harmless audience toes (IF they are actually real).
To be fair, the rest of the video does look somewhat natural – at least as far as the untrained eye can tell. The problem is, if parts of the video are actually AI-generated, who’s to say the rest isn’t? We’d be lying if we said we have not been fooled by AI videos before. Perhaps the ‘real’ parts of the clip were just more well-made AI-generated content.
Generative video AI has improved by leaps and bounds over the span of a year. AI filmmaking tools such as Google Flow can not only generate videos but also sound effects and dialogue — all from text prompts. Other AI-based creator tools – such as Sora, Runway, and Midjourney – all contribute to AI video content produced by the masses, and are available to the public for a fee.
The use of such tools has negative implications, with scam-related deepfake videos surging at an alarming rate. Now, it seems they’re also being utilized by Hollywood stars to promote and draw hype, albeit in this case, unconvincingly.
The possible use of AI certainly doesn’t help Mr. Smith’s tarnished reputation. At the time of writing, the video is still up on Will Smith’s official YouTube channel. Feel free to scrutinize the video yourself, and why not play a game of ‘which is AI, and which isn’t?’
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