Perry's mom fooled by fake photo
Some of the biggest stars in music, film and fashion walked the Met Gala's red (or, in this case, green) carpet this year.
One star who wasn't there? Katy Perry. And yet, after the event got underway, the pop star says she received a confusing text from her mom.
“Didn't know you went to the Met,” Perry's mom said, according to a screenshot of the message posted by the star on Instagram. “What a gorgeous gown, you look like the Rose Parade, you are your own float lol.” In the screenshot, the text included a photo of what appeared to show Perry in a dramatic flower-trimmed gown, surrounded by photographers.
The photo was one of several fake images appearing to show stars at the Met that were probably generated by artificial intelligence and spread widely on social media — a scenario that has prompted warnings from experts about the risks of using technology to manipulate imagery.
Perry's mom, Mary Hudson, was not the only one who fell for the trick. One post that shared the fake image of Perry was viewed 16.6 million times on X, prompting users to add a context label using the platform's “community notes” function — and highlighting a major challenge of Ai-generated images: It's quick and easy for fake or manipulated photos to spread online, and much slower to factcheck and add warnings to them.
“lol mom the AI got you too, BEWARE!” Perry wrote to her mother.