AI-Generated Impostors Invade ‘The Garden Of Time’

Photos of stars in elaborate outfits from the 2024 Met Gala blended seamlessly with AI-generated images posted online, while fake versions of Katy Perry, Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Kim Kardashian spread across the Social Networks.

While some AI-generated fakes were more obvious than others, many commenters and influencers assumed they were looking at real dresses: Katy Perry's own mother was fooled by an AI-generated image of her daughter.

What was the theme and dress code for the 2024 Met Gala?

The theme of this year's Met Gala was “Sleeping Beauties: Waking Up Fashion,” which refers to the pieces on display, many of which are too fragile to hang; instead, they are inside glass, like Sleeping Beauty.

The dress code was “The Garden of Time,” a 1962 dystopian tale by JG Ballard that proved thematically resonant for the occasion. Ballard's story tells of a magnificent, secluded sanctuary on the brink of invasion by a destructive mob.

The estate's garden is tended by Count Axel and his countess wife, who are powerless to stop the invasion, but can delay the inevitable by plucking the crystal “flowers of time” that sprout in the oasis.

There is a limited number of these flowers, and the garden is doomed to be overwhelmed by the crowd, eventually, it is only a matter of time.

Met Gala attendees were inspired by the story's themes of impermanence, decay and rebirth, with the event offering a visual feast of ethereal gowns that invoked the beauty of nature.

South African singer Tyla wore a dress that captured the theme perfectly, a dress made of sand that was designed to be impermanent, and was even cut during the event, after Tyla had immortalized the dress in the pictures.

In an ironic twist, Ballard's metaphor The garden of time it also seems apt for the current state of the Internet, a digital oasis nurtured by human interaction, now threatened by a deluge of AI-generated content that erodes the line between artifice and reality.

AI-generated stars flood the timeline

AX (Twitter), images of Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Rihanna at the Met Gala flooded the timeline, even though none of them attended the event.

Although the images were eventually flagged as fake and tagged with community notes, some of the posts received thousands of likes, shares and views.

Most of the images are stunning and true to reality, and the culture's scrolling speed is just right to allow for the casual flow of misinformation.

The proliferation of AI-generated images on Facebook is well-documented and has given rise to some surreal tropes, such as “Jesús shrimp”. In general, other social media sites have proven more resilient to AI-generated inundation.

However, many X and TikTok users were fooled by the fake Met Gala posts; one TikTok influencer even gave a positive review of an AI-generated dress that Kim Kardashian never wore (Kardashian attended the event in a different outfit).

The photos from the Met Gala were already a bit surreal, and the image generators proved capable of mimicking the floral dresses and experimental pieces worn by the real attendees.

The sight of distorted photographers in the background of AI fakes, some pointing their cameras at the floor, added to the night's otherworldly tone.

Some commentators expressed concern that the spate of AI-generated Met Gala footage was an ominous sign that the technology would soon be used to spread political disinformation.

Clearly, the metaphorical power of Ballard's story still resonates. Ballard's vision went beyond fiction, with the writer seeming to predict our social media future in a 1977 essay written for Vogue. Ballard wrote:

“Every one of our actions during the day, across the spectrum of domestic life, will be instantly recorded on videotape. At night we will sit down to scan the jones, selected by a computer trained to choosing only our best profiles, our wittiest dialogue, our most poignant expressions shot through the kindest filters, and then stitching them together into a heightened recreation of the day.”

Ballard's prescient predictions, however, could not foresee the rise of generative AI and the strange complications that come with it.