Soccer legend Jimmie Johnson was furious Monday night after social media trolls created a video of him “kissing” a young NBC reporter that is now going viral.
Johnson, 82, is a Miami football icon and was on the sideline during the national championship game at Hard Rock Stadium. In this game, the Indiana Hoosiers won 27-21, defeating their own Hurricanes and winning their first title.
But things got even worse for Johnson after the game when he realized that an X user had turned an innocent pre-game interview into something downright questionable with the help of Elon Musk’s Grok tool.
The iconic coach-turned-analyst previewed the big game by interviewing NBC’s Sara Cardona and posted images of the interview to X’s 76,000 followers.
In what has become an alarmingly regular occurrence on the social media site, some users were quick to tell Grok to change the photo into something else, turning it into a video of the two making out on the side of the field.
“I had no idea you were so into grandpa,” was the comment that accompanied the video, and Johnson immediately reacted to make it clear, if not already, that the incident didn’t actually happen.
Sara Cardona proudly posted a photo of herself interviewing Jimmie Johnson on the sideline
X users took liberties with the image and asked us to create an AI video of them kissing Grok.
“This is fake…this is so wrong!” Johnson wrote to his 345,000 followers on X, who accidentally projected the video far and wide, racking up more than 1 million views worldwide.
By lunchtime, the video had disappeared from X, with the social media site declaring it “in violation of the rules”.
But the damage was also done to Mr. Johnson. Johnson was appalled that AI technology was used against him and Cardona.
Johnson received varying degrees of sympathy from the public for “X”, although some supported him and agreed that the video was completely inappropriate.
Cardona is a charming sideline reporter who works for a local NBC station in Miami.
Johnson is a legendary football coach who won a national championship with Miami in 1987.
“We need to make certain forms of AI illegal,” one person wrote.
But others made fun of the two-time Super Bowl champion, with one sarcastically posting: “Thanks for sorting this out Jimmy, I thought it was real for a second.”
Another joked: “Jimmy, how is this fake?” It’s literally a video. Take responsibility and take it on yourself. ”
