Generative AI stunned on the 2024 Met Gala red carpet Monday night with numerous AI-generated images of celebrities who did not attend.
AI images circulating on X depict Katy Perry, who did not go to the event, in a massive cream-colored floral ball gown trimmed with moss, in line with the event’s “Garden of Time” theme. The image is strikingly convincing—its slight blurriness allows even the faces of the photographers in the background to look real. Despite the community note stating that the image is fake, some people in the comment section are still convinced, asking how long the dress took to make.
Perry is not the only celebrity targeted by AI-generated images of the event. Rihanna, who did not attend the event due to having the flu, was also shown in a large puffy circular blazer and floor-length gown with a similar color scheme to Perry’s. The post has over 6.3 million views and thousands of likes and comments, though a community note and multiple users in the comment section were quick to catch that this image was AI-generated after it was shared.
Perry posted the image on her Instagram, as well as another image of her non-real outfit at the Gala, in which she appears in a metallic bronze lock-and-key corset and green leafy skirt, with a wet-looking hair style. Perry captioned the photo, “couldn’t make it to the MET, had to work.”
The third photo in the post is a screenshot of a text conversation with her mom. “Didn’t know you went to the Met,” her mom wrote, with three flashbang emojis, in regards to an image of the first ball gown look. “What a gorgeous gown, you look like the Rose Parade.” In response, Perry wrote, “lol mom the AI got you too, BEWARE!”
In the comment section of the post, the official Instagram account commented, “a TRUE goddess 🌹😍.” Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It’s unclear where these images came from. They appear more realistic than standard AI-generated images—enough so to fool Perry’s own mother—and they fit into a wider growing trend of image generation. One reason that the Katy Perry image doesn’t easily parse as AI-generated is that it is pretty low resolution, whereas most AI-generated images we see online are often high res, and have that distinct, overly smooth quality common in Stable Diffusion models, as is the case with the Rihanna Met Gala image. Another reason is that much like the AI-generated Pope Francis in a white puffy jacket that went viral last year and fooled many people, the content of the image itself is not that outlandish. Katy Perry would wear something like this to the Met Gala.
However, on closer inspection, the image does contain some oddities that look AI-generated. As Hany Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley and one of the world’s leading experts on digitally manipulated images, previously told us, what AI image generators “have trouble with is highly structured shapes and straight lines.” If you look closely at the jumble of photographers in the background, you’ll notice limbs, heads, cameras, and bodies are not arranged in a way that makes sense.
Photographers and cameras in the background who are not shaped correctly.
404 Media has reported extensively, for example, on AI-powered nonconsensual “nudify” apps which promise to “undress” people by generating images of them naked. AI-generated influencers are also taking over Instagram by deepfaking new faces onto existing influencers’ bodies. Though these images of celebrities not at the Met Gala are significantly less sinister, their accuracy is concerning.
The AI-generated images of these celebrities, while benign, show how generative AI tools are now a part of every news event. Whether it’s viral deepfakes of Bella Hadid being made to say she “stands with Israel,” faulty AI image detection tools being used to discredit the real horrors of war, or AI-generated robocalls of Joe Biden telling primary voters to stay home, the accessibility of these tools is flooding the internet with media that is not real and is confusing people, even Katy Perry’s mom.
