Post-Super Bowl, a toxic mix of Ye’s swastika and Israeli AI-generated fakery

The Kansas City Chiefs weren’t the only group of people who made astoundingly bad choices in the Super Bowl. Add these folks to your list of villains: the rapper Ye (formerly called Kanye West), who hawked swastika T-shirts, and Guy Bar and Ori Bejerano of the Israeli ad agency BBDO, who appropriated celebrity images to make a deepfake video in response.

Ye’s a vicious antisemite. Shutting his site down was the right decision.

Ye bought Super Bowl ads from some local Fox affiliates in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. (Local stations get a share of ad time on national network broadcasts, including the Super Bowl — such ads are far cheaper since they only reach a fraction of the viewers seeing the program nationally.) The ads promoted his commerce site Yeezy.com. When the ads were purchased, the site featured a variety of clothing, but at the time when they were aired, the site had been changed to feature only one product: a white t-shirt with a Black swastika on it.

Shopify, which powered the commerce site, took it down day after the Super Bowl. “All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform. This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms, so we removed them from Shopify,” the company said in a statement. (Interestingly, it is the bait-and-switch that Shopify cited to take down the site, not the hateful merchandise.)

Let’s pick apart the actions of everyone involved here.

Ye has repeated posted antisemitic comments including calling for hatred of Jews and calling himself a Nazi. For example, he wrote “I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” He says he’s autistic and has in the past described himself as bipolar but that doesn’t excuse hate speech or glorification of Nazis. His actions before the Super Bowl show a clear awareness that he was attempting to fool media companies into advertising antisemitic symbols. Nobody should have anything to do with him.

Did the TV stations that aired the ad do wrong? I find their lapse at least potentially forgivable, as nobody expects a bait and switch from a commerce site to a site selling gear glorifying Nazis. Any media company that deals with Ye in the future, though, is being willfully ignorant.

Did Shopify behave appropriately in banning the site? It was following a clearly defined policy that had been violated. So it did.

The deepfake video response

Soon after Kanye’s ad aired and his site was taken down, Guy Bar and Ori Bejerano of the Israeli ad agency BBDO created a video response that circulated widely. In the video, celebrities of Jewish heritage including Michael Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg, Scarlett Johansson, Adam Sandler, Woody Allen, and Simon and Garfunkel appear wearing a T-shirt with Kanye’s name and a Star of David in a hand with the middle finger raised. I won’t share the video — you can easily find it online — but here’s a still from it with text I added.

The video is fakery. None of the celebrities were contacted or agreed to have their likenesses used. The creation of a video with all these celebrities so soon after the Super Bowl immediately made me suspicious, but seeing the estranged Simon and Garfunkel palling around together immediately set off my alarm bells.

Many of my friends circulated the video. I judged them for being either credulous or uncaring, because regardless of how you feel about the sentiment in the video, appropriating people’s images without their permission is a violation. (How would you feel if that was your likeness, and the image was a swastika instead of a Star of David?)

Scarlett Johansson commented on the video:

It has been brought to my attention by family members and friends, that an A.I.-generated video featuring my likeness, in response to an antisemitic view, has been circulating online and gaining traction. I am a Jewish woman who has no tolerance for antisemitism or hate speech of any kind. But I also firmly believe that the potential for hate speech multiplied by A.I. is a far greater threat than any one person who takes accountability for it. We must call out the misuse of A.I., no matter its messaging, or we risk losing a hold on reality.

Johansson’s image and voice have apparently been pirated before, and she’s fought back against it.

Did Bar and Bejerano behave appropriately in making the video? No. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and stealing the likenesses of others is wrong, regardless of the motives of the person doing it.

If you shared the video, did you make a mistake? Yes. Spreading misinformation without checking makes us all worse off. This is a good reminder to be more suspicious of the truth of what you’re sharing.

Should Jewish celebrities be doing more to fight antisemitism? Arguably. But that choice is up to them, not to somebody who decides they have the right to use their images without permission.

Don’t get sucked into the vortex

It’s easier than ever before to promote hate and ignore intellectual property rules online. There are guardrails, but determined people can evade them.

This is the perfect time to reaffirm your personal commitment to not be a part of the problem.

Because this crap doesn’t spread unless we spread it. So you can make a difference.

(Please keep your comments on topic. If you post hateful and antisemitic comments I will block them and ban you.)