Will Smith made headlines this week for allegedly using AI to simulate fans in a video he posted to promote his new album. In the minute-long video posted to YouTube, images can be seen of fans holding up signs praising Smith, nearly in tears from the power of his music. YouTubers were quick to point out that these crowd shots looked fake, with many fans having extra fingers or uncanny facial expressions. Will Smith has yet to directly address the allegations, but the online consensus is that these fans are clearly AI. However, it may not have been Will Smith’s intention to use AI. There is evidence that YouTube has been secretly upscaling certain YouTube Shorts with machine learning to improve image quality. It could be the case that this video was simply a YouTube experiment gone wrong. While this is possible, internet sleuths have pointed out that these bizarre AI nightmare fans are also present in the version of the video posted to Facebook.

Besides coming across as an extremely desperate attempt to appear relevant, the use of AI to simulate fans raises intriguing questions about the future of entertainment. A lot of the talk surrounding AI in the entertainment industry has been focused on the use of celebrity likeness. Why hire a celebrity to shoot a commercial when you can simply have AI steal their likeness? But there has been very little discussion about the use of AI to simulate fans. Imagine how easy it would be to generate buzz around an album or film by posting promotional videos of fake fans praising the project. Or imagine an army of fake, AI film critics who can influence a film’s Rotten Tomatoes or IMDb score.

There is already an army of bots on social media. Some estimate that nearly 20% of the discussion on social media surrounding global events comes from bot accounts. Normally, these bots can be detected using linguistic cues, but as AI improves these bots will become harder to detect. Further, AI is becoming better at reproducing human likeness in photos and videos, increasing the difficulty in spotting bots. And, as Will Smith has shown, bots can now be used to populate your concerts.

Modern discourse surrounding celebrity and entertainment occurs online. So long as this is the case, the potential for AI meddling is high. The key to remaining successful in the industry is remaining relevant. To remain relevant, you need fans. In the past, this required real red-blooded people engaging with your work. Now, this is no longer a requirement. In five years, it will probably be impossible to differentiate between the human and AI fans at a Will Smith concert. Fortunately for now, but unfortunately for Will Smith, we are still able to differentiate.