Recommendations of the Editorial team
For those anxiously awaiting an “alternative” to the Super Bowl halftime show with Bad Bunny, it appears that the “All-American Halftime Show” will take place on the same day, February 8th.
But contrary to what you may have seen on social media, at least Joan Baez and Neil Young won’t be there.
AI fakes continue to invade social media, with boomer-era musicians continually being featured in fake photos. Fake images of classic rockers in hospitals or singing at other rockers’ graves are flooding the Internet – deceiving some fans and provoking just as many to laugh. (No, Steven Tyler did not visit Robert Plant in the hospital after he “collapsed on stage.”)
Joan Baez and Neil Young as AI fakes
The cast for Turning Point USA’s “All-American Half-Time Show” – “a celebration of faith, family and freedom” – has not yet been announced. (You can, however, vote on the TPUSA website for which category of music you want to see and hear, including, tellingly, “All in English”).
But that hasn’t stopped the AI machine from producing at least one fake TPUSA halftime ad announcing that Baez and Young will co-headline “a heartfelt and patriotic alternative to the Super Bowl 60 halftime event” designed to “honor the enduring legacy of Charlie Kirk.”
To emphasize this point, a football field and a large American flag are shown in the background. In hyperbolic language familiar to anyone who follows such things, the post adds: “With Joan’s golden voice and Neil’s graceful harmony, the All-American Halftime Show will transform the world’s largest stage into a moment of hope and homecoming.”
Representatives for Young and Baez declined to comment, as did representatives for Bob Dylan, Phil Collins, Bruce Springsteen and others, who have never actually commented on AI images that have deceived part of their fan base.
The inclusion of Baez and Young, two particularly vocal Trump critics, is particularly amusing given Young’s new anti-Trump protest song “Big Crime” and Baez’s criticism of the president. Not to be forgotten is their participation in this year’s “Fighting Oligarchy” tour by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Los Angeles, where they were also accompanied by Maggie Rogers.
There, Baez sang the folk song “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around” with updated Trump-era lyrics (“Ain’t gonna let no white supremacists turn me around”) and Young encouraged the audience to sing along to “Rockin’ in the Free World.”
Another false post claims that “six legends” of country music, including Willie Nelson, will be taking part in the same bizarre halftime show. “More AI nonsense about Willie,” a spokesperson for Nelson told Rolling Stone. “They obviously don’t know anything about Willie, right?”
To quote one commentator on the Young Baez invention: “I don’t think so, but nice try, you idiots.”