AI-Generated Met Gala Images Of Katy Perry, Rihanna Went Viral: Here’s How To Spot A Deepfake

Topline

Fake AI images of Katy Perry and Rihanna at the Met Gala went viral Monday, the latest instance of deepfakes fooling people on the internet into believing celebrities and political figures said or did something they didn’t—but often simple mistakes, like missing fingers or poor quality, are clear indicators of doctored videos and images.

Katy Perry attends the 2017 Vanity Fair Oscar Party. Getty Images

Key Facts

Deepfakes are a form of artificial intelligence called “deep learning” that teaches itself how to solve problems when given a dataset, and are used to swap faces in videos and pictures to make realistic-looking fake media.

Some deepfakes are made for comedic purposes, like a compilation of Nicolas Cage deepfaked in movies he didn’t star in, like “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Man of Steel.”

Others have used the AI maliciously, creating porn (mostly “revenge porn”) often using the faces of celebrities—according to a Deeptrace report, 96% of all deepfake videos found online in 2019 were pornography.

The creation of deepfakes is credited to Reddit user “Deepfake,” who posted fake pornography on the site in 2017, swapping the faces of adult film stars with celebrities like Taylor Swift and Scarlett Johansson.

Political figures are also often victims of deepfakes—a fake video of Barack Obama circulated in 2018 of him calling Donald Trump a “total and complete dipshit.”

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News Peg

The Met Gala was Monday, and a fake image of Perry in a large floral dress was shared to X, receiving over 15.5 million views and 314,000 likes. However, Perry appears to be missing an arm, she’s not on the right carpet for this year’s theme and just one of a row of photographers in the background is paying attention to her—which seems unlikely if it were a real photo. A second AI-generated picture of Perry in a different gown also went viral on the platform, with over 4.5 million views and 115,000 likes. Although the singer is on the correct carpet in this image, there are abnormalities in her eyes and hand. The singer reposted both posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, and posted the first picture on Instagram with the caption “couldn’t make it to the MET, had to work.” An AI-generated image of Rihanna also went viral on X, though the singer didn’t go to the event—reportedly because she had the flu.

How To Spot A Deepfake

• Remnants: These are oddities, or something out of place in the picture or video. This can be mismatched shoes or earrings, a misshapen jaw, missing fingers or extra legs.
• Eye movement: Oftentimes, deepfake videos portray people either blinking weirdly or making strange eye movements. A study published in Cornell University’s “arXiv”used eye-blinking detection to determine deepfake faces don’t blink properly.
• Audio/Video Quality: Many deepfake videos show an out-of-sync audio and video match—for example, this video of Russian President Vladimir Putin (which Reuters translated) claiming to have reached peace with Ukraine, but his mouth movements do not match the audio.
• Sources: As deepfakes get more convincing, one of the best ways to spot whether they’re fake is to check their sourcing, though social media makes this a little harder as anyone can share videos and pictures. The original source of a video of President Joe Biden should either be the White House, an official government agency or credible news platform.
• Sharpen detection skills: There are several websites dedicated to helping people better their deepfake spotting skills. MIT’s Detect Fakes is a short quiz that allows users to compare two videos to decide which is real. Microsoft’s Spot the Deepfake is a 10-question quiz that has users detect signs like eye movement and emotional reaction to determine deepfakes.

Tangent

After President Joe Biden released his reelection campaign announcement in April 2023, the Republican National Committee released a rebuttal video with AI-generated images portraying an apocalyptic Biden-Harris second term. The video—a part of the RNC’s Beat Biden campaign—features images of rundown, collapsed Wall Street buildings, war and explosions in Taiwan and police in tactical gear defending San Francisco from crime. Democratic National Committee executive director Sam Cornale suggested in a tweet the RNC’s use of AI was desperate, and it “had no choice but to ask the AI to help.” Several deepfakes of Trump have gone viral, including fake images of him running from authorities outside a courthouse, a video of him claiming Jeffrey Epstein—who was found dead in his cell in 2019 while awaiting trial for federal sex trafficking charges—didn’t kill himself, and a photo shared by Trump on Truth Social of himself kneeling under a spotlight. He appeared to be missing a finger in the photo.

Further Reading

Katy Perry Met Gala Dresses Go Viral—But They’re AI Fakes (Forbes)

Republicans Launch Eerie AI-Generated Attack Ad On Biden (Forbes)