Sabrina Carpenter is back in the headlines this week thanks to the music video for her latest single “House Tour.” But unfortunately, the video she shot I didn’t It is also widespread to sign up for .
TikTok user @jameskamaraa’s video has been viewed millions of times on social media, in which he shows his “day with Sabrina Carpenter.” The video uses a combination of AI-generated video clips of Carpenter doing mundane things like brushing his teeth, eating Domino’s pizza at 10 a.m., sitting in his Tesla Cybertruck, and taking a walk. It’s also hard to tell whether the footage, which inexplicably culminates in him meeting Adam Sandler at In-N-Out Burger, is also AI-generated.
The video went viral mainly because Carpenter’s fans praised his actions, calling his actions “bizarre, disturbing” and downright “dangerous.” First, the story he builds around his “day” with Carpenter is annoyingly misogynistic. This fake version of her is silent, glared at, and content to eat a protein bar while he eats Domino’s in the morning. But AI has made it even more alarming, something many women are concerned about as the technology has become more commonplace in recent years.
Admittedly, the AI-generated clip of Carpenter is very short and has a limited range of movement. And her face and hair look a lot like the days of her first few albums and her days on Disney Channel. girl meets worldin contrast to her current aesthetic and facial features. However, the fact that this AI-generated carpenter does not look similar completely The Uncanny Valley is a whole new level of horror. Not only because achieving such a thing requires resources that would destroy the planet, but also because those resources are used to strip women of their agency and silently transform them into objects of male desire.
Why do you keep doing this?!
The use of AI imagery feels like an inevitability to many…especially since this is not an isolated incident. In early 2024, Swift’s friend and fellow pop star Taylor Swift was at the center of a new AI controversy as artificial intelligence-generated deepfake porn of her began circulating on social media. This led to protests from a number of groups, including SAG-AFTRA and the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (also known as RAINN), as well as the Biden administration and other politicians.
A bipartisan bill was quickly introduced in the Senate that would give victims the right to sue those who create or possess non-consensual “digital counterfeits.” Earlier this year, the Missouri state government introduced the Taylor Swift Act, which criminalizes non-consensual deepfakes.
Unfortunately, even the mundane version of this “trend” isn’t exclusive to Carpenter. Because there are far too many TikToks of people using the AI platform to imitate photos of themselves with celebrities. Earlier this year, a fan received harsh criticism for doing the same thing. stranger things He co-stars with star and Djo frontman Joe Keery in a very intimate fictional scenario involving a partner and a baby.
Videos and posts like this not only cross countless lines of agency and consent, but they also say a lot about who thought it was perfectly reasonable to do this. As @litraerii says, “Men who need to do this to feel some kind of validation because women don’t care about themselves at all and have probably never felt a woman’s touch in their lives before they start imagining Sabrina Carpenter as a girlfriend might need to work on their pathetic personalities.”
(Featured image: Sabrina Carpenter)
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