Audio By Carbonatix

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate photos and videos generated by artificial intelligence from authentic ones, and many people with questionable motives have attempted to take advantage of that reality. Now, Will Smith has found himself dealing with some easily avoidable controversy thanks to a video that was posted to hype up his concert tour.

Over the past few years, we’ve gotten a glimpse at a future where artificial intelligence has the potential to be harnessed for a wide variety of tasks that previously required humans to exert far more time and energy to complete than their virtual counterparts.

The companies behind that rapidly developing technology obviously have plenty of incentive to position that as a positive development, and while there are undoubtedly some objectively solid upsides linked to the rise of A.I., it’s also become impossible to ignore the downsides that arguably cancel them out.

A study conducted by researchers at MIT showed that becoming overly reliant on platforms like ChatGPT can essentially make you dumber, and there have been a concerning number of horror stories linked to their negative impact on critical thinking that seemingly support that conclusion.

Misinformation and “fake news” were already a problem prior to the advent of the A.I. Boom, and while most people who spend enough time online have conditioned themselves to spot signature tells that suggest a photo or video being positioned as “real” is anything but that, there’s plenty of slop that goes undetected to the untrained eye—including some clips from a Will Smith concert tour that have garenred plenty of attention.

Will Smith used A.I. slop to create fake concertgoers in a video hyping up his tour

In 2023, we were treated to a video that showed just how far A.I. had to go in the form of some fairly horrifying footage created in response to a prompt about Will Smith eating spaghetti.

The rapper-turned-actor made light of it the following year by posting a video of himself actually eating spaghetti, and now, things have really come full circle.

Smith has spent the past couple of months traversing Europe for a tour to support Based On A True Story, his first studio album in 20 years, and he recently posted a video that purportedly included footage from those shows with a caption that read “My favorite part of tour is seeing you all up close. Thank you for seeing me too.”

That video is currently still on his YouTube channel, but I’m also posting a link to a version someone else uploaded due to the fact that all signs point to a large chunk of the footage being  A.I.-generated.

One of the most egregious moments concerns a fan with a sign that reads “‘You Can Make It’”—the song Smith is performing—”helped me survive cancer,” although a screenshot shows the telltale blurring and textures that are currently associated with videos created by A.I. platforms.

It does seem like there’s a chance A.I. was simply used to upscale genuine concert footage, as there are other seemingly authentic clips scattered throughout the video. However, it’s unclear why those didn’t get the same treatment, and it’s very clear this is not a great look.