Whether you love or hate celebrity culture, the Met Gala is an event. The less jaded among us can watch all the biggest stars take their boldest fashion risks of the year – unlike an awards show, this is an event that encourages avant-garde extravagance. And if you find all this bland, then you can laugh at Ed Sheeran’s outfit. something Troy Bolton wore in High School Musical 3.
But this year’s Met Gala was a test.
“Katy Perry. That’s it,” reads an article from X. In the photo, Katy Perry appears to be wearing a massive dress adorned with three-dimensional floral appliques. her long train blends into realistic-looking foam, which cascades across the beige and red Met Gala carpet.
If you look at the image for longer than just a quick glance, you might reasonably believe that the “Teenage Dream” singer arrived at fashion’s biggest night wearing this whimsical, forest-like dress. But in every other Met Gala photo, the carpet was white and green as part of the “Garden of Time” theme; in this photo, it’s beige and red. Why does Katy seem to be walking on a different carpet?
This is the telltale sign that this viral image of Perry is fake. And yet, it already has more than 10 million views on X and more than 300,000 likes.
A few minutes later, another user on X posted another image of Perry. Her lips are slightly parted as if surprised by the paparazzi, and she is wearing a bronze corset that looks like a key to a garden. Unlike the first image, this one actually features the correct color palette and decor for this year’s gala, but something still isn’t quite right. Her floral skirt appears to have been cut and pasted onto her body, and the light hits her corset in an unnatural way.
So how do you know if it’s a fake, as opposed to a weird photo? No fashion magazines reported on Katy Perry’s look tonight – it doesn’t look like she’ll be there this year. Meanwhile, Perry cryptically liked both viral tweets, but did not comment on the misleading posts.
Every year at the Met Gala, Rihanna is among the best dressed. In the days leading up to the event, she promised her fans that she would arrive at the event in time for dinner – usually, she’s fashionably very late. She even dyed her hair pink for the occasion.
At the start of the red carpet, an image of Rihanna wearing a dramatically regal garden-themed dress emerged. The shoulders transform into a sculptural halo, embroidered with birds, vines and flowers. But again, despite 2.6 million views, the image isn’t real. Rihanna dyed her hair pink, remember? Like Perry, Rihanna is nowhere to be seen. People Magazine reported that Rihanna had to skip Monday night’s festivities after coming down with the flu.
The consequences of a fake Rihanna dress are pretty minor. But based on Rihanna’s history with Met Gala themes, would she really take the easy way out and wear a floral dress to the “Garden of Time” celebration? Like a deepfake AI Drake song, these synthetic looks were a little too on-the-nose, lacking the creativity that makes the Met Gala unique. Could an AI create Cynthia Erivo’s sparkly costume or Lana Del Rey’s spooky-cool woodsy look?
Zendaya, an early favorite for best dressed, showed up relatively in a blue-green outfit that made her look like a super-chic fairytale villainess. A few hours later, when an image emerged of Zendaya wearing a black leather dress and floral headpiece on the carpet, I was ready to believe it was another fake photo. But the truth is stranger: After five years away from the gala, Zendaya actually walked the carpet twice in two different outfits. Go figure.
Still, each new image of a celebrity served as a call to check out the patterns on the carpet, the flowers along the banisters and whether the paparazzi in the background looked a little funky or not. Usually, the Met Gala is an opportunity to discuss the extravagant outfits of famous people as a brief distraction from our unglamorous Monday nights. But in the age of widespread generative AI tools, celebrity culture constantly reminds us that we can’t believe everything we see online.
techcrunch
