These days, knowing how to spot AI generated content is indeed getting trickier. And the upshot is that just about everything can be accused of being artificially generated – which has perhaps never been better demonstrated than by the ridiculous response to Lady Gaga's new music video.
Gaga just dropped the music video for The Dead Dance, a song debuted in Season 2 of Netflix's Wednesday. Directed by Tim Burton, it's a suitably nightmarish black-and-white cacophony of monsters and dolls. But some are already claiming that parts of it were made using AI.
i didn’t think we’d ever be in a timeline where a tim burton x lady gaga collab would turn out to be AI slop… but here we are https://t.co/mSffur61DQSeptember 3, 2025
Despite Burton previously describing AI as "like a robot taking your soul", it seems users aren't convinced by some of the CGI dolls, believing them to be artificially generated. The way some of the dolls' fingers appear to clip and melt into one-another has been highlighted as so-called evidence.
One of the music video's animators responded to a comment asking whether the dolls were made with AI, insisting, "Nooooo. Of course the ones moving were animated in a VFX Studio."
And then there's the fact that production company The Roots has shared (below) the entire production credits on Instagram, featuring a huge list of artists and designers. In other words, it seems safe to say that this one was touched with the human hand.
If anything, the accusations show that AI paranoia is going too far. It seems there's no longer room for effects that look, deliberately or otherwise, unpolished and imperfect. Anything remotely disorientating is immediately slapped with the 'AI' badge of shame. Sure, the rise of AI slop is real, but artists shouldn't have to defend their work from AI accusations just because it looks a little bit weird. In the case of The Dead Dance, looking a little bit weird is entirely the point.
