Selena Gomez's AI Met Gala Look Went Viral, Left a Lot of People Confused
AI-created Selena Gomez images prove you don't need to attend an event to own it.
If you watched the 2023 Met Gala and didn't notice Selena Gomez but then turned to social media and suddenly saw everyone marveling at the singer's surprise appearance, you might have thought you were going crazy.
Well, relax, you are absolutely fine.
No one actually saw Selena Gomez on the steps of the Met Gala this year, as the star hasn't attended the event since 2018. The photos that went viral on Twitter aren't real — they are AI-created. The images were published by the Twitter account @kevormez on May 2, the day after the event, and quickly garnered more than 25M views and 404K likes, confusing many users.
The photos look so lifelike that many fans believed Gomez was actually there. Some commented that this look was her best and took over the Met Gala this year. In fact, the post received more likes than any of the real pictures from the Met Gala. The second most liked outfit from the night was Anne Hathaway's, which got just over 234K likes.
Since then, the account has added a disclaimer to the post, emphasizing that the images have been altered. But even before that, Met Gala fans were getting suspicious after taking a closer look at the photos.
First of all, Gomez's dress is totally out of theme, as this year's gala was dedicated to the late fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld. Secondly, the carpet doesn't match the one at Met Gala 2023. And most importantly, those who follow the fashion event every year easily recognized Gomez's outfit — it is a blue Atelier Versace dress that Lily James wore at the 2022 Met Gala.
As it turned out, the beautiful, lifelike photos were created by Selena Gomez's Twitter fan page @ourlikeselena. The fans taught the AI to create new artificial images of the beloved singer by feeding a neural network a large number of her photos, and the AI created the photorealistic images using pictures of other celebrities (in this case, Lily James).
Naturally, such a hoax raises important questions about using AI: some see it as a threat to people of creative professions, others believe it is a new form of art. Whatever your stance on the issue is, there is no doubt Selena Gomez looks incredible in the photos — and it's quite disappointing those aren't actually real!