The pop star had to debunk speculation that a recent promo video she recorded was AI-generated
It’s a true sign of our grim, uncanny times that we’re at a moment when something real can be completely confused for something AI-generated. Mariah Carey learned that the hard way with a short clip she recorded for Spotify Wrapped, thanking fans, as always, for their support.
As the clip spread around some Carey fan pages on social media, the replies were swiftly seized by claims that it must’ve been created using artificial intelligence. To be fair, it’s not the most charismatic clip you’ll ever see of Carey, lending it a bit of that weird, rote emptiness so much AI-generated stuff has. And in debunking the claims, Carey herself even acknowledged some of the visual’s faults, which may have fueled the speculation.
“Bad lighting and a red lip have you all thinking this is AI??” she wrote on social media. “There’s a reason I’m not a fan of either of those things!” (That this quip can so easily be read as quintessential Carey shade at the current aesthetic value of AI art, makes it all the better. “Bad lighting and a red lip” could be the “I don’t know her” for the AI art era.)
Carey is, of course, in the middle of her always-busy holiday season, especially as she celebrates the 30th anniversary of her 1994 Merry Christmas album and perennial smash “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” The singer has spent much of the past month on her annual holiday tour and has just a handful of dates left. The next gig is tomorrow, Dec. 7, in Baltimore, and the tour wraps on Dec. 17 in Brooklyn.
