Will Smith kicked off his “Based on a True Story” tour in the U.K. on Sunday. Before it began, a video he posted online had fans questioning whether the crowd cheering him on was actually made by artificial intelligence.
The clip shows Smith performing on stage in front of an enthusiastic audience. “My favorite part of tour is seeing you all up close,” the caption read. “Thank you for seeing me too.”
However, some viewers immediately noticed something felt off. The crowd didn’t just look excited, it looked oddly rendered.
One shot shows a wide-angle view with multiple distorted faces, a common tell-tale sign of AI generation. Another suspicious detail? A blurry sign that appears to say “From West Philly to West [???],” but the characters don’t form legible words.
‘2 bad weather people’
In a separate clip from the same video, another crowd member holds a sign that reads: “2 BAD WEATHER PEOPLE AT PALEO 2 NIGHT — WILL BE A STORM.” A user who tried to pinpoint the AI usage in the video wrote, “WTF is this supposed to mean?”
Online reactions ranged from amused to alarmed.
Some users criticized the visuals as clearly fake, but others voiced concern over what happens when AI-generated content becomes too realistic to spot.
“We’ll be unable to discern what is real or not, whether upscaled or fully generated,” one wrote.
The spaghetti meme connection
Of course, some fans couldn’t help but refer to another moment of viral weirdness involving Smith and AI. On Reddit, a user joked that he’s just “getting back at all those AI video companies showing him eating spaghetti.”
That’s a nod to a video posted in 2023, in which an AI-generated Smith appeared awkwardly shoveling pasta into his mouth.
The video, made using a text-to-video model, became a meme — full of glitchy chewing and visual chaos.
Despite its surreal appearance, the spaghetti video took on a strange legacy.
AI developers began using “Will Smith eating spaghetti” as a benchmark to test how well their models could replicate facial movements and complex actions like eating and slurping.
In fact, people are still trying to re-create it.
Even Smith joined in the fun last year, posting a parody video to Instagram in which he dramatically eats spaghetti in real life — this time with far fewer glitches.
A growing list of AI controversies
Smith isn’t the only artist caught up in the AI conversation.
Just this month, Rod Stewart faced backlash after an AI-generated tribute video to Ozzy Osbourne showed the late rocker in “Heaven” holding a selfie stick alongside other deceased musicians like Kurt Cobain and Tupac Shakur.
“We truly are in the end times,” an X user wrote.
Fans were also fooled by Velvet Sundown, an AI-generated band that racked up a million Spotify streams before it was revealed that none of its members actually exist.
On Saturday, July 5, The Velvet Sundown posted a statement on X admitting the truth: they’re a “synthetic music project guided by human direction.”
“All characters, stories, music, voices and lyrics are original creations generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools employed as creative instruments,” the statement said.
They closed with, “Not quite human. Not quite machine. The Velvet Sundown lives somewhere in between.” The group’s Spotify bio has since been updated to confirm the “support of artificial intelligence.”
As the technology becomes more regulated, artists and audiences alike are being forced to reckon with what’s real and what’s fake.
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Author: Alan Judd
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