Will Smith has responded to the storm that's surrounding his AI generated concert video, and actually I have to hand it to him – it's perfect PR. When you're being called out for faking a crowd in an attempt to forge a comeback, it's not a good look and you'd be forgiven for handling it badly. But Will has posted a pretty hilarious response, which will be more than enough for most people to forgive him – even if it doesn't deal with a pretty major problem, creatively.
Posted on his Instagram account, the video (below) shows Will performing looking suave with sunglasses on. Cut to the crowd and... well, you'll see. These aren't the best deepfakes ever, that's for sure – but that's the point.
CATS! They're all CATS.
While Will could have posted a grovelling apology, or simple acknowledgement of the controversy, humour is the best way to save a brand in certain situations. And this is a wry nod to his blunder, showing a willingness to laugh at himself – which is very needed in this case. At least, that's how most of the general public will see it so from a PR perspective this works on the whole.
However, for a large proportion of the creative community this won't go quite far enough. Sure, it's possible to see the debacle for what it is on the surface – a blunder that really only throws shade on Will and his team. But the incident uncovers a more worrying pattern of a brand choosing AI over a skilled video editor, and being obtuse enough not to know that the majority of people can see the obvious signifiers of AI.
It's not that this does AI itself any favours – the mistake isn't presenting the technology in a positive light. But if the teams working on some of the biggest brands in the world are uninformed enough to make this mistake, then it doesn't spell good things for the further rollout of AI in different applications.
For the majority though, this was a brilliant branding response. Let's just hope they learn from it. Try here to see if you detect AI in a video.
