'Many People' in Zendaya's Life Thought Those AI Wedding Images Were Real

Zendaya is on the promotional trail for The Drama, her new movie with Robert Pattinson. It’s about a newly engaged couple whose idyllic relationship falls apart when one of them makes an unexpected confession. Because so much of the marketing around this A24 drama is wedding-themed, it’s gotten a lot of people talking about Zendaya’s own rumoured nuptials to Tom Holland. When Zendaya’s long-time stylist Law Roach claimed that the big day had had “already happened” and the press had “missed it”, the rumour mill went wild. Did they actually tie the knot and Law got permission to tell the world or was he just messing around?

The internet responded accordingly: by being creepy losers and making AI-generated images of the pair marrying that they tried to pass off as real. Alas, the tech has no improved enough that many of the images in question looked pretty convincing. Others looked daft as hell. But media literacy is not our species’ forte these days, so Zendaya had to call it out.

During a recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Zendaya explained how many people had been fooled by the images. “While I was just out and about in real life, people were like, ‘Oh my God, your wedding photos are gorgeous’. And I was like, ‘Babe, they’re AI. They’re not real.’” Even some people in her personal life were fooled and thought they’d been uninvited. Mercifully, Zendaya brought along 100% authentic video of her wedding to help clear up the issue.

It’s a strong testament to Zendaya and Holland’s ability to keep their relationship private that they could get married without a whisper or leak making its way to the press. See, it can be done! But it must suck to have to deal with all the AI crap. The dissipation of misinformation has only gotten weirder and scarier in the age of instantly-generated hyper-realistic images like this. At least it wasn’t something creeper. One wonders how long it’ll be before someone with Zendaya-level clout and money decides to sue if one of these images causes real trouble.