The use of AI in mainstream media has become more and more widespread, as many on social media and beyond have been using the technology to impersonate celebrities in songs and even create deep fake video footage that looks so realistic it’s hard to distinguish reality from what’s fake.
Now, one fake pizza commercial that a Reddit user made using complete AI technology is going viral after its “disturbing” imagery has garnered the attention of thousands on social media — even Twitter owner himself, Elon Musk.
The 30-second fake commercial for a non-existent pizza chain called “Pepperoni Hug Spot” seems off from the beginning, with all the AI food and people seeming a bit warped and creepy.
Definitely wasted 3 hours of my life making this today… Everything is AI from the VO to the video and images. Assembled in After Effects.
by u/PizzaLater in midjourney
“Eat Pepperoni Hug Spot pizza. Your tummy say, ‘Thank you.’ Your mouth say, ‘Mmm,'” the narrator of the commercial says as faces begin to warp. “Pepperoni Hug Spot: Like family, but with more cheese.”
Naturally, aside from showing the dangers and inaccuracies of AI technology. Reddit and Twitter (where the video was reposted) had much to say about it.
“Dude this is so cursed I can’t handle it,” one Redditor wrote, with another calling the pizza “Half pepperoni, half exorcist.”
Over on Twitter, the famous chain Pizza Hut had some words to say about the advertisement.
my heebies have been jeebied
— Pizza Hut (@pizzahut) April 25, 2023
This garnered a response from none other than Elon Musk, who found the bit mind-blowing, according to his emoji choice.
?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2023
“Text-to-video technology is still in its infancy, so the quality of the clips remains quite rough. However, it was perfect for this spoof commercial,” Pizza Later, the creator of the commercial, told TODAY via email. “A simple prompt like ‘a woman eating a slice of pizza, TV commercial’ yielded fantastic results.”
The creator said that he used several programs to run the program, namely GPT4 for the script and Runway Gen2 for the video clips while putting the whole thing together in After Effects.
