By now, you might have seen that viral video. A young, dark-haired woman sits in the front of her car, as she talks to the camera about a person’s “stank body odor.”
There’s nothing particularly remarkable about the video itself — in fact, it looks like any other UGC ad for deodorant that you’d find scrolling on TikTok. But there’s been a lot of fanfare on X about how the clip was purportedly made.
Described as “all AI” by AI designer Linus Ekenstam, two different AI businesses — Arcads and HeyGen — have taken credit for the clip’s creation.
In a post on X, user Beck (@beckyltv) claims to be the person who generated the video to advertise her anti-body-odor product. “People are losing their minds,” she wrote.
“Just like with Midjourney or Chat GPT, you need to be skilled at prompts. This video looks real because I matched the script with the AI model. I analyzed the model, and then I added text based on her mannerisms.”
But soon, it emerged that the AI-generated girl wasn’t fully AI. Instead, she was actually a paid actor selling video promos on Fiver.
“This whole thing is really strange,” X user and AI creator Benjamin De Kraker wrote. Via screenshots, De Kraker then accused Arcads of “openly lying to people” by retweeting posts that claimed the person in the video was “100% AI generated.”
In a statement to Passionfruit, a spokesperson for Arcads said they were “taken aback” by these claims. “It would make no sense for us to fabricate such things,” the spokesperson said. “What would be the benefit?”
They then went on to claim that they have a “contract” with the actor. They claim the actor consented to them cloning her likeness to create the AI tool.
(The actor did not respond to our request for comment. Arcads also did not respond to our question about why it retweeted the post about the actors being 100% AI.)
“We have never claimed that these are ‘100% AI-made’, although some of our clients have mistakenly mentioned that in some posts. But it was later clarified by them,” they added. “We have never paid for any promotional content because we were simply unprepared for such a surge. Our platform has been down for two days now, and it was never our intention to experience such a sudden influx.”
