Every time I write about Kanye ‘Ye’ West in connection to a controversy, it never seems real. During the 59th Super Bowl on February 9, 2025, Kanye West had purchased ad time to promote his website. The commercial itself was recorded on an iPhone and featured the rapper at a dentist’s office while he explained that the money that would have gone into the ad went into this dental visit. When viewers typed in Ye’s website, they were met with a single purchasable item: a shirt featuring a swastika on it. The rapper has been slammed in the past for his antisemitic views, but now that we are in the future, it appears that deepfakes are doing the jobs of celebrities and other powerful voices to express their disdain.
Unfortunately, actress Scarlett Johansson fell victim to a series of deepfake videos condemning West for his shirt. In the video, she is featured alongside other celebrities including Mila Kunis and Sacha Baron Cohen wearing shirts directly speaking to the rapper. Even though she genuinely does condemn his actions, she didn’t record the video.
“I urge the U.S government to make the passing of legislation limiting AI use a top priority. It is a bipartisan issue that enormously affects the immediate future of humanity at large.”
In recent years, the actress has been incredibly vocal about her position against forces like OpenAI and ensured that the conversation covered both Kanye West’s actions and the deceit that could originate from AI. Scarlett Johansson, alongside several other famous voices, has also expressed concern over West’s actions, with actor David Schwimmer urging the now-head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, to unfollow the rapper on social media platform X well before the commercial aired.
It seems that ‘Ye’ will continue his odd string of public controversies, seeing as the last few weeks have conjured several. If he isn’t forcing his wife Bianca Censori into wearing outlandish outfits in inappropriate locations, he’s skipping town to live in Japan to avoid legal responsibilities. Now, he’s the new face of antisemitism all over again.
