Britney Spears Has Been Replaced By AI?
Britney Spears fans are claiming the pop star's Instagram videos are deep fake impostors.
Britney Spears has one of the biggest fanbases out there, and now a large subset of the fanbase is convinced that the pop singer may have been replaced by artificial intelligence technologies. In a breakdown by Evie Magazine, Instagram users have been thoroughly combing through Britney’s posted videos to find evidence that the girl shown in these posts isn’t really Britney. Specifically, these fans point out that someone else is playing Britney and deep fake technology is being used to replace her face.
It does sound like a pretty far-fetched theory, but some of the videos highlighted in the article are pretty strange. Britney Spears often posts videos of Instagram of her dancing, and one Instagram user has been looking at these videos frame-by-frame to catch anything suspicious. In the first video, Britney’s hands sweep over her face, and for a brief moment, it seems like her eyebrows and eyes change.
These brief frames of changes seem to occur in more than one video, and other videos highlight where the tattoos on Britney Spears seem to disappear and reappear for a moment. Of course, it’s possible that the video blur is just causing these brief instances of the video seemingly changing, but it’s always possible the AI theory could be true. While it’s one of the crazier celebrity theories out there, it certainly isn’t the craziest.
As the article and the commenters on the video point out, deep fake filters sometimes have trouble tracking fast movements. If a deep fake is being used over Britney Spears’ face, then it would make sense if there were some hiccups in the video. Undoubtedly, these fans will continue to study these videos closely, so maybe there will be something more concrete to prove or disprove these AI theories.
To their credit, it’s not like the technology to deep fake celebrity faces isn’t already out there and more widely available than ever. There are plenty of Instagram and YouTube accounts where users deep fake celebrities and impersonate them in videos, with a Tom Cruise impersonator being a notable example. Theoretically, someone could deep fake Britney Spears fairly convincingly if they wanted to.
The article and Britney Spears fans also highlight the fact that Britney hardly has any public appearances, and fans haven’t seen her out and about in a long time. Concern over Britney’s mental health struggles and her conservatorship has long been a point of discussion in the Britney fanbase, so this brings up their concerns that Britney is being controlled by her father. Some even accuse her husband of being someone who could be controlling Britney behind the scenes.
The #FreeBritney movie was a major public force as Britney Spears fought the legal battles to get her conservatorship under her father lifted. Legions of celebrities also threw their support to the Free Britney movement, including Miley Cyrus, Bella Thorne, Cardi B, Missy Elliott, Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Puth, Justin Timberlake, and many more. In 2022, the 14-year conservatorship of Britney and her estate was finally terminated.
