In recent posts, content creator Jessie Paege said that she was “scammed” by artists she hired to make the lyrics video for her new song “Aphrodite” after allegations arose from her fans that it was illustrated with AI.
Paege responded to the controversy with both a community post on her YouTube page as well as in a Shorts video,
“They said they were a bunch of illustrators, but they used AI,” Paege said in a short video captioned “I need to come clean. : ( I’m sorry.”
“I feel really dumb,” she added, “because I get scammed really easily because that’s like a terrible thing for a human being to do, a human being would never do that to me.”
Paege, though, refused to take the music video down because she “put so much time and work and money into not only the song but the video.”
Instead, she said she would like to move on to new projects.
The lyrics video for “Aphrodite,” released on Nov 25, features mostly static, retro, pixelated gaming-style visuals featuring a pink-haired main character that loosely resembles Paege.
The images have inconsistencies in their art style and qualities, which led viewers to suspect it was generated by AI.
“That song is amazing! But sad, that it is with AI images 🙁 please support other artists and don’t let AI steal from them.” read a comment from user @saskiamel7368.
With nearly 2 million subscribers on YouTube, Paege is a popular social media influencer and musician known for her quirky content about mental health, LGBTQ advocacy, and personal growth.
More comments that accused Parge for not disclosing the use of AI in the music video appear to have been deleted from below the video.
In comments, her fans have defended her.
“Please be kind to her because she seems pretty upset about it, and us being mean won’t help! It’s not peoples fault they get scammed,” wrote @TH30NLYD34DINSID3
Paege also sent out a community message on her page saying she was “super sad” about it.
“I hired illustrators and even a ‘pixel artist’ to work on my lyric video for Aphrodite. It turns out, they were not being truthful and used AI in the process of creating these images,” she wrote. “I’m super sad and hurt and I did really have fun planning out what I wanted to portray in the video. I hope you all can understand, I feel very silly and ridiculous for not realizing sooner.”
She added that, “It seemed too good to be true to have sooo much art created for a lower budget.”
Many fans commented in support, telling Paege that she did nothing wrong.
Still, some said if Paege was going to keep the video, she should label it as AI.
“Artist here. Keep the video up, make that bread as you deserve from your own music. Just clarify it’s AI or credit the ‘artist’ as an AI artist so nobody wanting to check them out/commission them are under false pretenses,” said user @commentsforthealgorithm.
While many commentators were sympathetic to Paege, some believed that she should have taken the video down.
And others disputed her claim that she was scammed.
“’It seemed too good to be true to have sooo much art created for a lower budget.’ Which translates to: ‘I wanted to pay artists as little as possible and now I’m acting like the victim complaining that I got AI when if I’d only bothered to look for a legit artist that was paid a normal amount I would’ve gotten real work,” said Reddit user u/imaginary92.
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