Someone Needs to Cancel A.I. Jimmy Kimmel
How long until we can’t tell A.I. Jimmy Kimmel from the real thing?
Luckily for now, it doesn’t take a forensic scientist to tell that startling TikTok videos featuring Kimmel and sidekick Guillermo Rodriguez updating us on the late-night show’s suspension are faker than fake. Both funny men are unreasonably shiny, for example, as if they exist in a more realistic version of Pixar’s Toy Story universe. Plus, there’s something undeniably “off” about the images, an almost-but-not-quite resemblance that gives me the uncanny valley creeps.
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But at least a dozen videos, featuring stories like “Jimmy Kimmel’s 3 Secret Plans Will Turn ABC Into A Joke,” have been circulating over the weekend, according to LateNighter, and the TikToks have views in the hundreds of thousands. While many will see the videos as made-up digital junk, that likely still leaves multitudes who believe that Kimmel is talking to Stephen Colbert about starting a podcast together, inspired by their pal Conan O’Brien. (That’s one secret plan, anyway — the TikTok doesn’t bother revealing the second and third diabolical schemes.)
While such videos are spreading disinformation, like the Jon Stewart monstrosity that circulated last month, it’s worth remembering that Kimmel himself has goofed around with deepfake videos. On his 20th anniversary show in 2023, Real Jimmy Kimmel interviewed Deepfake 2003 Jimmy Kimmel.
That bit was done in service of comedy, and it’s possible that the makers of “Guillermo’s 3 Secret Plans to Help Jimmy Kimmel Strike Back” are going for a laugh as well. (As you can see, these TikTokers are really into the concept of “three secret plans.” Once again, however, there’s only one secret plan — Guillermo and Jimmy starting a travel show.)
But crucially, there’s no disclaimer on any of these videos that indicates satire, parody or “just having fun,” which means your Aunt Cheryl just shared them with her Facebook book club as honest-to-god breaking news.
No real harm done for now, but it’s not hard to see that these kinds of A.I. hoaxes will take comedy, and the rest of us, into some unsettling places.
