Some crowd clips in Will Smith’s 2025 European tour montage appear to animate photographs of real concertgoers. That is different from proving his team invented a crowd or digitally filled an empty venue. A separate YouTube Shorts enhancement experiment may also have affected how the video looked on that platform.
Why the crowd video drew scrutiny
Smith posted a promotional montage showing cheering audiences during his European tour. Viewers questioned whether some of the crowd footage was AI-generated, pointing to visual distortions, unstable signage and movement that looked unlike ordinary concert footage. TechCrunch covered the allegations on August 28, 2025, and noted that some people and signs appeared in Smith’s earlier posts.
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Those earlier posts matter: side-by-side comparisons by Andy Baio at Waxy.org match some faces and signs in the montage to photographs from tour events. The comparisons support the view that at least some shots originated as images of real concertgoers, even if the moving clips were later altered.
What the evidence suggests about the clips
Baio’s analysis suggests that professionally shot audience photographs were animated into short image-to-video clips. That is a plausible explanation for the uncanny motion, but it is an inference from visual comparisons—not a confirmed account from Smith’s production team. The specific tools sometimes proposed, such as Runway or Veo, have not been confirmed as the tools used.
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The distinction is important: animating a real photograph can produce synthetic motion without making the people in the original image fictional. The reviewed reporting does not establish how many shots were altered, who edited them, or why the team chose that approach. It also does not establish that Smith’s team fabricated a whole audience or digitally enlarged an empty venue.
YouTube’s enhancement is a separate issue
Some viewers saw the montage on YouTube Shorts, where the platform was also experimenting with image enhancement. Google spokesperson Allison Toh told Baio that YouTube was using traditional machine learning on selected Shorts “to unblur, denoise, and improve clarity in videos.” She said the enhancements were not made with generative AI. Waxy.org reproduced Toh’s explanation.
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TechCrunch reported that the Shorts edits made Smith’s YouTube version look more artificial than versions on other platforms. This platform processing is separate from the suspected image-to-video editing of the crowd shots; the available accounts do not identify exactly which process caused each visible artifact. YouTube’s experiment is not evidence that the platform generated Smith’s crowd footage.
What is established—and what remains unknown
- Supported by comparisons: At least some people and signs in the montage appear in earlier photographs from the tour.
- Leading explanation, not confirmed production history: Some still photographs may have been animated into short clips. The exact workflow and tools are not established.
- Not established: That the entire audience was fabricated, that an empty venue was made to look full, or that Smith’s team intended to deceive viewers.
- Separate platform claim: Google described selected Shorts enhancement as traditional machine learning, not generative AI.
Visual glitches can prompt useful questions, but they do not by themselves prove how a video was made. TechCrunch cautioned that there is no reliable way to determine AI use from appearance alone. Vice’s expert commentary offers hypotheses about the footage, not direct knowledge of the production team’s decisions. Fortune reported on August 27, 2025 that Smith’s representatives had not publicly addressed the criticism at that time; that dated report does not establish their position today.
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Calling the people in the footage “fake” collapses two different questions: whether the source images show real concertgoers, and whether the motion in the clips was generated or altered. The photo matches support the first; the visual analysis suggests the second for some shots. Neither proves that every crowd image was manipulated or that the audience itself was invented.
For more on the initial allegations and the platform-version differences, see TechCrunch’s August 28, 2025 report. For the photo comparisons, see Baio’s Waxy.org analysis. Vice’s expert discussion and Fortune’s August 27, 2025 report provide additional context, while leaving the production team’s intent unconfirmed.
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