Purported AI-Generated Deepfake Images of Katy Perry at 2024 Met Gala Circulate Widely

Purported AI-generated images depicting Katy Perry attending the 2024 Met Gala circulated widely on social media, leading to public confusion about her presence at the event. The images were realistic enough to deceive fans and even Perry’s mother, who believed them to be authentic. Perry publicly clarified the images were fake, attributing them to AI and noting she had missed the event due to work.

Risk classification

• Primary risk domain: 3 Misinformation
• Primary risk subdomain: 3.1 False or misleading information

The incident involved the generation and viral spread of a highly realistic deepfake image of a celebrity, which misled the public and the celebrity's family into believing she attended an event she did not.

Causal factors

• Entity: Human
• Intent: Intentional
• Timing: Post-deployment

The incident was caused by an unknown human actor intentionally generating and distributing deepfake images of a celebrity using a deployed AI image generator.

EU AI Act risk tier

• Risk tier: 3 Limited Risk

Risk Level 3. Limited Risk: The system generated a deepfake, which is subject to specific transparency obligations under the Act to ensure users are aware they are interacting with or viewing AI-generated content.

AI system and alleged parties

• AI system: None named
• AI purpose: Deepfake Image Generation; Image Generation
• Behaviour type: Tool
• Alleged developer: Unknown deepfake technology developers
• Alleged deployer: unknown
• Alleged harmed parties: Truth, Katy Perry, General public, Fans of Katy Perry

Harm severity

Highest direct severity in any category: Severe. Severity is scored from Negligible to Catastrophic in each harm category, for harm the reports describe as caused directly or indirectly by the AI system.

• Physical: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Infrastructure: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Property: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Financial: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Environmental: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Malicious content: direct Minor, indirect Negligible
• Differential treatment: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Civil rights: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Democracy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Privacy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Psychological: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Epistemic: direct Minor, indirect Negligible
• Child sexual exploitation and abuse: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible

Malicious content

Reported: Yes, the report describes the creation and spread of a deepfake image of Katy Perry.

Directly caused: An unknown actor created and spread a synthetic deepfake image of Katy Perry at the Met Gala on social media.

Indirectly caused: N/A

Inferred additional harm: It is likely that other similar deepfake images of celebrities at the event were generated and shared, exposing millions of social media users to synthetic content.

Epistemic

Reported: Yes, the report describes how the deepfake image deceived Katy Perry's mother and other fans into believing she attended the Met Gala.

Directly caused: The deepfake image successfully misled Katy Perry's mother and fans, temporarily distorting their understanding of real-world events.

Indirectly caused: N/A

Inferred additional harm: The viral spread of highly realistic deepfakes of public figures erodes public trust in photographic evidence and the shared information ecosystem.

People affected

• Occurrences reported: 1
• People reportedly harmed: 2
• People reportedly exposed: 2

Potential causes

Management

• Prioritizing Virality Over Safety: Platforms prioritized user engagement over implementing verification checks.

Technology

• Realistic Image Generation: AI generators can create highly realistic fake images of public figures.
• Lack of Provenance Markers: Generated images lacked metadata or watermarks identifying them as AI-made.

Data Inputs

• Abundant Celebrity Training Data: Abundant public images of Katy Perry allowed for highly accurate training.

Human Factors

• Cognitive Bias and Credibility: Public expectations of her attending made the fake highly believable.
• Low Digital Literacy: Users and family members failed to recognize visual indicators of AI synthesis.

Process and Methods

• Inadequate Platform Labeling: Social media lacked automated detection and labeling for AI-generated media.
• Rapid Viral Dissemination: Sharing mechanisms allowed the image to spread before verification occurred.

Regulatory Environment

• Absence of Deepfake Laws: Lack of legal frameworks governing non-consensual synthetic celebrity media.

Information quality

• Classification confidence: High
• Reason for confidence: The report clearly details the incident, the parties involved, and the nature of the AI-generated content. There is no ambiguity about the fact that the image was a deepfake and that it deceived the subject's mother.
• Ambiguities identified: The specific AI model used to generate the deepfake is not identified in the report.

AI-generated deepfake images of singer Katy Perry at the 2024 Met Gala circulated widely on social media. While demonstrating the increasing realism of synthetic media, the incident was benign in nature, targeting a celebrity for entertainment purposes, and carries negligible national security implications.

• Overall national security impact: Negligible
• Response level: Minor
• Scope: Unknown
• Primary target: No clear primary
• Alleged perpetrator: Unknown

Threat characteristics

• Imminence: Long-term. Represents an ongoing strategic concern regarding the proliferation of synthetic media rather than an active national security crisis.
• Autonomy: Human-controlled. The AI acted as a standard image generation tool directly prompted and controlled by a human user.
• Novelty: Established threat. Celebrity deepfakes and AI-generated image manipulations are well-documented and have occurred frequently prior to this event.

Impact by dimension

• Physical security: Negligible. The incident involves purely synthetic images of a celebrity and poses no threat to physical systems, infrastructure, or human safety.
• Information security: Negligible. This was a benign celebrity deepfake with no connection to state-sponsored disinformation, intelligence compromise, or hostile information operations.
• Sovereignty: Negligible. The incident had no impact on state authority, electoral processes, or core government operations.
• Economic security: Negligible. There was no threat to financial systems, critical supply chains, or strategic technological competitive advantage.
• Societal stability: Negligible. Although the deepfake temporarily misled some individuals, it did not threaten social cohesion, civil liberties, or population safety.