Will Smith‘s infamous Oscars slap of Chris Rock has been given the AI treatment courtesy of Midjourney, and the results are quite shockingly realistic.
The popular AI-driven image generator recreated the moment when the rapper-turned-Oscar winner slapped comedian Chris Rock onstage at the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony with just a few prompts.
The prompts — which were created by an artist solely credited as JDL4 — were then shared by @heyBarsee, a popular Twitter user known as the “AI Guy.”
Check out the results below:
Midjourney AI is the Beast of meme making 🔥
POV: You just talked smack about Will Smith’s wife at the Oscars (Big mistake) 🧵
— Barsee 🐶 (@heyBarsee) March 24, 2023
The prompt, according to Barsee, was a simple one.
“GoPro view of Will Smith wearing a tuxedo slapping the camera forcefully, Oscars award ceremony in the background, fine art cinematic portrait photography, ultra hyper-realism, dramatic lighting, action photograph –v 5 –s 750,” he shared.
2. Prompt:
GoPro view of Will Smith wearing a tuxedo slapping the camera forcefully, Oscars award ceremony in the background, fine art cinematic portrait photography, ultra hyper-realism, dramatic lighting, action photograph –v 5 –s 750 pic.twitter.com/NwKiJY5Uw6
— Barsee 🐶 (@heyBarsee) March 24, 2023
3. “Keep my wife’s name out of your … prompts!” pic.twitter.com/yDtIrBAcky
— Barsee 🐶 (@heyBarsee) March 24, 2023
The images quickly went viral on Twitter, with users remarking how “accurate” the images were, and others remarking that it was “jarring … we need to shut this down.”
Will Smith has tried to make light of the infamous incident in recent months.
In February, Smith took to his TikTok page to snark about the controversial slap, posting a duet with a woman introducing a new challenge. The challenge in question asked people to pick up an object, look at it and ask how it sees or thinks of them.
The woman claimed people would get an answer back in their minds through their intuition. Will Smith looked intrigued by the challenge and grabbed the Oscar he won at the 2022 ceremony. He looked at the award and seemed to struggle with asking the question before the clip cut off.
Realistic-looking AI images of Will Smith notwithstanding, the rapid rise of AI has sparked a lot of discussion and debate in society — with Hip Hop artists finding themselves wading into the waters as digitally manipulated images, videos, and sounds featuring their likenesses have surged in popularity.
Earlier this week, Young Guru, 9th Wonder, and DJ Clark Kent voiced their concerns as an AI-generated JAY-Z verse went viral, with the Roc-A-Fella affiliate calling for the government to intervene on artists’ behalf.
“I’ve been trying to tell everyone that this is where we are now with AI. For some reason this one got everyone’s attention. So what do we do. On one hand I’m well aware that you can’t stop technology. Once the genie is out of the box you can put him back in,” Guru wrote on his Instagram page.
In February, Young Guru also spoke up when an AI-generated song featuring Kendrick Lamar began making the internet rounds — and Guru urged the powers that be to act fast and implement laws that would protect people from the possible dangers of such technology.
“This has dominated my Howard group chat for a couple days. Ok I’m at the point where I can voice my concerns with our current state of AI,” Young Guru wrote on his Instagram page. “I have followed as many versions of what AI could do for some years now.”
