Have you seen the viral photos of basketball legend LeBron James making a bold appearance at the Barbie film premiere in head-to-toe pink? This week, they took the internet by storm, circulating widely on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. But here’s the truth: those eye-catching images are completely fake.
Images of celebrities like LeBron James, along by captions such as “LeBron James on the Barbie movie,” occasionally feature accessories such as a charming pink pocketbook. Even if the hue is slightly off in one shot, James is also seen wearing what could be described as a beige skirt.
Color details notwithstanding, the pictures are computer-generated utilizing AI programs like MidJourney or DALL-E. The artificial intelligence tool that was utilized to create the bogus James photographs that are circulating on social media is now unclear.Politifact, a group that checks political claims, took notice of one of the false photographs, which has amassed over 260,000 views on Facebook alone. Some of the fabricated images of James had extremely disproportionate—even “alien-like”—fingers, as pointed out by Politifact. Fake photos keep going popular because AI technology still has a long way to go before it can make realistic fingers.
Greta Gerwig’s new film, which stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling and takes a critical look at Barbie’s origins, but also a celebration of the iconic doll. Impressively, Warner Bros. has won the box office with over $200 million for the film thus far.
It wasn’t always the case that different colors denoted distinct genders, even though it may appear “obvious” to us living in the 2020s. The origins of the baby-naming colors blue and pink are actually something I wrote about not long ago. Contrary to popular belief, pink was traditionally reserved for infant boys and blue for baby girls before to the 1940s. This color relationship was even considered “natural” in the early 1900s.
