(Credit: Neilson Barnard/MG24 / Contributor / Getty Images Entertainment)
AI-generated images of Katy Perry, Selena Gomez, and Rihanna on the red carpet at the Met Gala are going viral on social media, even though none of the singers attended the event.
Katy Perry re-posted the artificial images of her on her Instagram account with the caption, "Couldn't make it to the Met, had to work." Even her mother thought the photos were real. "Didn't know you went to the Met," her mom wrote in a text exchange Perry shared. "What a gorgeous gown."
X has added Community Note disclaimers underneath some of the images, including the one of Perry. "This image is fake. Katy Perry was not at the 2024 Met Gala and this image was most likely created using Artificial Intelligence (AI)," it says.
X's algorithms seem to pull from several data sources to determine if the images are fake, such as news articles and scanning Getty Images for Met Gala photos taken by human photographers. Some disclaimers are better than others, and not all fake images have one.
In the photo of Rihanna below, the X disclaimer notes that the image is AI-generated.
Gomez skipped the gala this year as well, but images of her on the red carpet flooded social media, each in different outfits. X has not yet identified all of them yet; this image does not yet have a Community Note. But another has an elaborate explanation for why the image is fake: "Selena Gomez’s altered face has been superimposed onto someone else’s body. The body belongs to Leonie Hanne."
The background also does not match the decor at the Met Gala, which had a white and green carpet with greenery lining the edge. The "image" of Selena Gomez shows a traditional red carpet with no greenery.
The Met Gala is known for headline-grabbing fashion, but the use of AI this year soured some fans' experience. "Fake Met Gala photos racking up millions of views, this website is so cooked," one user posted on X.
AI image generators can prevent this from happening by rejecting requests from users to create images with celebrities in them. Midjourney has done so for former President Trump and President Biden ahead of this year's election, but image-generation platforms are not required to do so.