Scarlett Johansson is calling for the U.S. government to reign in AI after she was featured in an anti-Kanye West video that’s going viral on social media. The AI-generated video features prominent celebrities including Johansson, Drake, Natalie Portman, Steven Speilberg, Sam Altman, and Woody Allen all wearing a white T-shirt bearing a cartoon middle finger that contains a Star of David. The finger floats above the word “KANYE.”
The video is a reaction to rapper West’s Super Bowl stunt. The pro-Nazi rapper bought ad space during the big game to drive people to his personal website. After the ad aired, West changed the website into a storefront with one item: a white T-shirt with a swastika on it. Shopify pulled the storefront after it went live.
At first blush, the AI-generated video seems authentic. It opens on Johansson and is the kind of corny celeb-driven response we’ve come to expect. But the tell-tale signs of AI are there: bodies that don’t match faces, younger versions of celebs, and strange artifacts.
Johansson was upset. “It has been brought to my attention by family members and friends that an AI-generated video featuring my likeness, in response to an antisemitic view, has been circulating online and gaining traction. I am a Jewish woman who has no tolerance for antisemitism or hate speech of any kind. But I also firmly believe that the potential for hate speech multiplied by AI is a far greater threat than any one person who takes accountability for it. We must call out the misuse of AI, no matter its messaging, or we risk losing a hold on reality,” Johansson said in a statement to People.
She said she’d been a victim of AI before and that there was a reckoning coming, one that the U.S. was ignoring. “It is terrifying that the U.S. government is paralyzed when it comes to passing legislation that protects all of its citizens against the imminent dangers of AI,” she said.
Johansson was the voice of an advanced AI chatbot in the 2013 film Her. Since then, Sam Altman has been obsessed with making her the voice of ChatGPT. To hear her tell it, Altman and OpenAI approached her to be the voice of the chatbot and she refused. When OpenAI released its voiced ChatGPT model, one of the options sounded suspiciously like the actress and she sued. After Johansson went public, OpenAI pulled the voice.
“I urge the U.S. government to make the passing of legislation limiting A.I. use a top priority; it is a bipartisan issue that enormously affects the immediate future of humanity at large,” Johansson said at the end of her statement to People about the AI video going viral.
The video is the work of Ori Bejerano, a self-professed ‘Generative AI Expert’ and an employee at the Tel Aviv-based ad firm Gitam BBDO. As of this writing, the video is still up. Bejerano is even taking a victory lap and posting news hits about his viral success on his timeline.
There are videos and images on that Instagram account that are way more messed up than a fake video calling out West’s antisemitism though. The bulk of his account is weird AI-generated slop. You’ve got all the hits: Bejerano casting himself as a noble astronaut, as a Roman bust next to inspirational quotes, and as Superman. He’s also got a disturbing video where far-right Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir watches Teletubbies and falls asleep imagining a world where Donald Trump turns Gaza into Disneyland.