“The pop girls have become lazy.”
Dellusonal
Pop sensation Kesha Sebert, known more commonly as Kesha, has landed in hot water with fans after posting a painfully AI-generated image on social media.
The image shows a pile of leather handbags with the word “delusional” spray painted in black across each of them, intended to market her new album of the same name, scheduled for release on November 29.
But there are some glaring problems with the image. For one, the word “delusional” is misspelled on plenty of the bags — irony much? — a hallmark shortcoming that has long plagued AI image generators.
Fans were understandably outraged by the lazy image, accusing Kesha of cheaping out on human labor.
“The AI and the words being spelt [sic] wrong,” one user replied. “The pop girls have become lazy.”
“Kesha speaking on behalf of like all of ur fans PLEASE don’t use AI this is disrespectful to designers and there are a lot of errors in this, it just looks really messy,” another user wrote.
Delushal
It’s a surprisingly easy-to-avoid slipup in what was shaping up to be a highly successful year for the pop sensation.
Kesha released a track titled “Joyride” on July 4, amassing almost 80 million streams on Spotify and over seven million views on YouTube.
The track was an appropriately joyful celebration of her first musical release since becoming an independent artist under her own label Kesha Records (hence the Independence Day release.)
A long-standing legal dispute with her former producer Łukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald, which started over a decade ago, ground her musical career to a halt until the case was settled out of court in June 2023.
A new video for “Joyride,” released on Wednesday, opens with her driving down the street in an autonomous Waymo taxi, which could hint at a futuristic theme for the album, considering she also used generative AI for the artwork.
We’ve seen plenty of other high-profile artists come out publicly against the use of generative AI in music or production. An open letter signed by more than 200 high-profile musicians earlier this year called for protections against the predatory use of AI to clone artists’ likenesses or voices.
Sure, AI image generators are a convenient and affordable way to fast-track the creation of creative assets like an album cover. But given Kesha’s widespread success and resources, one can’t help but wonder why she would stoop this low.
Was the painfully AI-generated cover meant to be a meta-commentary, considering the name of her upcoming album? Or was it an embarrassing blunder that could’ve easily been avoided?
“This is a good example of an opportunity where u should listen to ur fans,” another supporter tweeted. “We love you but the AI is lame and this is sloppy.”
More on generative AI: Judging Them Blind, Humans Appear to Prefer AI-Generated Poems
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