While many guests were deeply confused by this year’s Met Gala theme — Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, with dress code to be taken from the J.G. Ballard short story The Garden of Time — at least one person seemed to get the assignment. Well, I should really say “person,” because it was an AI generated photo of Katy Perry ascending the iconic stairs, clad in a ball gown adorned with flowers and butterflies, finished with a mossy/soddy trim. It would’ve worked, had it been real. But Katy Perry did not, in fact, attend on Monday, which she had to remind none other than her own mother who saw the photos and texted her daughter sartorial salutations. Yes folks, AI is so good these days that it’s fooling mothers with fake images of their own babes.
Katy Perry may not have made it to the 2024 Met Gala — but her mom didn’t get the memo!
The singer and American Idol judge, 39, was the unwitting victim of AI on May 66 when someone created an image of “her” at the Met Gala — except it wasn’t actually her at the Met Gala. In fact, it wasn’t even the right carpet at this year’s event. While the “dress” that “Perry” was wearing was gorgeous — and right on theme for “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” — it was all fake.
Perry caught wind of the AI deepfake and posted it to Instagram, along with a text she got from her mom, Mary Perry. Her mom wrote, “Ha Feather! Didn’t know you went to the Met. What a gorgeous gown. You look like the Rose Parade, you are your own float lol.”
The singer responded to her mom, “lol mom the AI got you too, BEWARE!”
She captioned the Instagram, “couldn’t make it to the MET, had to work,” and ended the carousel of what exactly she’s working on. Spoiler alert: She’s in the recording studio.
Aw, I love that she calls her daughter “Feather!” It’s like the slightly more whimsical version of Doria Ragland nicknaming Meghan “Flower.” I have a story that’s kind of the reverse of this. Instead of my mother thinking a fake photo was really me, she needed assistance in identifying the real me. I was flying home from college for a visit, and she asked me to describe what I was wearing so she could recognize me at the airport. I told her I was dressed as her only child. Her nickname for me is “Sassafras,” so she should’ve seen that response coming.
As for AI, for all of the technology’s eerie and uncanny success at generating fake celebrity likenesses, I’m actually kind of amazed that they didn’t get the red carpet right! That seems like a rookie mistake! The photo Mary Perry was fooled with has Katy in the big ball gown, but a quick Google search confirms that the backdrop is from 2018 (a year Katy really did attend). In Katy’s Instagram post she featured a second AI image that put her on the correct carpet, in a different outfit (gold bustier top with a vintage key down the middle, paired with a vines-and-flowers skirt). Anyway, AI’s slip up here gives me hope that we have a bit more time before the machines’ dystopian takeover of the planet is upon us. I’m a glass half full girl.
Photos credit: Avalon.red and via Instagram