“This is slowly going too far”
Will Smith or AI? The star makes fun of his deepfakes in such a funny way
In his new Instagram clip, Will Smith eats spaghetti – and has fun with AI development
© Will Smith/Instagram / PR
A video of Will Smith eating spaghetti went viral last year because the AI clip clearly demonstrated the technology’s weaknesses. However, it has now caught up significantly. Smith noticed that too. And now he makes fun of it himself.
Whether text, images or, most recently, video: artificial intelligence is learning more and more quickly to create media from scratch – with increasingly impressive quality. The social consequences, for example in the form of deepfakes, cannot yet be estimated. Actor Will Smith has now reacted to the rapid progress in his own way and imitated one of the most famous fake videos.
The clip went viral last year. The simple title “Will Smith eating Spaghetti” immediately gave away what was coming. However, due to the incredibly poor implementation of the AI, the clip was full of unintentionally absurd humor. Now Will Smith himself topped him in a clip posted on Instagram earlier this week – by actually eating spaghetti.
Caricature of the cartoon
The AI clip wasn’t just so funny because it portrayed Smith like a bad cartoon caricature of himself. Above all, the AI seemed to have no understanding of how exactly a human normally eats pasta. The AI Smith stuffed the spaghetti into his mouth with his hands like a sandwich, bit into the side of the dangling noodle strings and made a gigantic mess. And that’s exactly what the real Smith is doing now.
With his head twitching wildly, he stuffs pasta into his head from all directions and eats from several plates at the same time. At times he even pulls the noodles out of his mouth – it’s only after a few seconds that you notice that this section is being played backwards. And finally, Smith even chews on another spaghetti eater’s dreadlocks.
Real Will Smith or AI fake?
The audience’s reaction shows how effective the parody is. “Is that AI?” asks not only one of the commentators on the clips. The uncertainty also comes from Smith playing it straight. “This is getting out of hands” is the title of the clip. Additionally, it includes a reference to Sora, the new video tool from ChatGPT developer OpenAI, which can create impressively realistic videos from individual sentences (find out more here) – and thus represents a gigantic leap from the first spaghetti video.
It is currently not known whether it can actually make videos look as realistic as Smith’s joke video: In order to prevent deepfakes and other misuse, OpenAI initially only released Sora to a select group of people. It should not only test their skills, but also check them for possible weak points.
The absurd spaghetti video shows very well why this is necessary. The biggest failure of AI wasn’t portraying Smith so unrealistically – but doing it at all. If AI is allowed to create videos of real people against their will, the potential for abuse is simply gigantic. From blackmail attempts to bullying to election manipulation: Deepfakes are already showing that they don’t have to be perfect for people to fall for them. Smith’s parody could actually come from an AI without any barriers with little technical progress. And that makes it all the more important in its current form.