Whether you love celebrity culture or hate it, the Met Gala is an event. For those not so bored, you can see all the big stars taking the boldest fashion risks this year. Unlike an awards ceremony, it is an event that encourages avant-garde luxury.And if you think it's all boring, just laugh with me at how Ed Sheeran's outfit looks What Troy Bolton wore in High School Musical 3.
But this year's Met Gala was a test.
“Katy Perry. That's it,” one X post read. In the photo, Katy Perry appears to be wearing a huge gown decorated with 3D floral appliqués. As the pearlescent gown dangles to the ground, its long train disappears into realistic-looking moss and cascades across the beige and red Met Gala carpet.
Take one look at this image, or look at it long enough, and you might believe the “Teenage Dream” singer arrived at fashion's biggest night wearing this whimsical, woodsy dress. . However, in other photos from the Met Gala, the carpet was white and green as part of the “Gardens of Time” theme. In this photo they are beige and red. Why does it look like Katie is walking on a different carpet?
That's a clear sign that this viral image of Perry is fake. Still, on X he has already received over 10 million views and he has received over 300,000 likes.
Minutes later, another user on X posted another image of Perry. She opens her lips slightly as if surprised by the paparazzi, wearing a bronze corset that looks like a garden key. Unlike the first image, this one actually has a color palette and scenery appropriate for this year's celebrations, but something still feels off. Her floral skirt seems cut and pasted onto her body, and the light falls unnaturally on her corset.
So how do you know it's not a weird photo and it's fake? No fashion magazine is reporting on Katy Perry's look tonight — it looks like she's not actually in attendance this year. Meanwhile, Perry cryptically liked both viral tweets, but she did not comment on the deceptive posts.
Every year, Rihanna is one of the best dressed at the Met Gala. In the days leading up to her event, she promised fans that she would actually arrive at the event in time for dinner. Usually she is very fashionably late. She even dyed her hair pink for the occasion.
At the early end of the red carpet, images surfaced of Rihanna wearing a dramatically extravagant garden-themed dress. Her shoulders bulge into a sculptural halo, embroidered with birds, vines, and flowers. But again, despite getting 2.6 million views, the image is not real. Remember when Rihanna dyed her hair pink? Like Perry, Rihanna is nowhere to be seen. People magazine reported that Rihanna came down with the flu so she had to miss Monday night's festival.
The impact of Rihanna's fake dress is pretty small. But given Rihanna's history of nailing Met Gala themes, she really took the easy route and wore her floral dress to the “Garden of Time” celebration. Will you attend? Like the AI-generated deepfake Drake song, these synthetic looks were a little too outlandish and lacked the creativity that would make the Met Gala unique. Will an AI come up with Cynthia Erivo's fancy suit or Lana Del Rey's eerily cool forest vibe?
Zendaya, an early frontrunner for the best-dressed award, showed up in a teal outfit that made her look like a very chic fairy tale villain. Hours later, when an image of Zendaya in a black leather gown and floral headpiece appeared on her carpet, I braced myself for another fake photo. But the truth is even stranger. After she didn't attend a gala for five years, Zendaya actually walked the carpet twice, in two different outfits. Go figure.
Still, every time I saw a new image of a celebrity, I had to check to see if the pattern on the carpet, the flowers along the stair railing, and the paparazzi in the background didn't make it look a little funky. The Met Gala is usually a brief distraction from a sober Monday night, an opportunity to chat about celebrities' outlandish outfits. But in an age of generative AI tools, celebrity culture is a constant reminder that we can't believe everything we see online.