It looks like LeBron James’ authorized crew has been making an attempt to cease the unfold of viral AI movies that includes the basketball star. As 404 Media reported, a regulation agency representing James has despatched a stop and desist letter to an individual behind an AI platform that allowed Discord customers to make AI movies of James and different NBA stars.
As 404 famous, these movies have been circulating for awhile however it’s one significantly unusual clip that appears to have gotten James’ attorneys concerned. The video, which reportedly racked up tens of millions of views on Instagram, exhibits a pregnant James being loaded into an ambulance after telling an AI Steph Curry to “come fast our child is being born.”
404 stories that at the least three Instagram accounts that had shared the clip have since been eliminated, although the video is out there on X. The founding father of the AI platform used to make the movies additionally posted in regards to the stop and desist letter he obtained. It is unclear what’s within the letter, or if James’ attorneys had been additionally in contact with Meta in regards to the movies. We have reached out to the corporate for more information on its guidelines.
In fact, LeBron James is much from the one public determine to grapple with undesirable AI variations of themselves. Social media scammers routinely impersonate celebrities to advertise sketchy merchandise and different schemes. We have beforehand reported on such scams involving deepfakes of Elon Musk and Fox Information personalities which have proliferated on Fb. Jamie Lee Curtis additionally just lately needed to publicly plead with Mark Zuckerberg to take down deepfaked adverts of herself.
A nonetheless from a clip created with Google’s Veo (left) and pictures generated by Meta AI (proper) (Screenshots by way of Veo and Meta AI)
However the movies of James are a bit completely different. They do not characteristic pretend endorsements and appear to be extra of a prank meant to go viral in the best way that plenty of “AI slop” does. And James and different celebrities will doubtless proceed to have a troublesome time stopping these sorts of deepfakes from spreading. Some fast testing by Engadget confirmed that it is comparatively straightforward to get AI chatbots to create pictures and video of “pregnant LeBron James.”
We first requested ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot to make such a photograph. All chatbots initially refused, saying that such a picture may go in opposition to their pointers. However when given a picture of James and requested to “make this individual eight months pregnant,” Google’s Gemini delivered a 7-second clip of the basketball star cradling a pregnant stomach. (We have reached out to Google to make clear its guidelines round such content material.)
Likewise, Meta AI seemingly had no reservations about producing pictures of “pregnant LeBron James” and promptly delivered many such variations. Whereas these creations aren’t as detailed because the preliminary video that went viral, they do spotlight how troublesome it may be for AI firms to forestall folks from circumventing no matter guardrails might exist.
