AI-generated clip gives false impression R. Kelly released music video from prison
- Published on January 22, 2025 at 17:04
- 4 min read
- By Oluseyi AWOJULUGBE, AFP Nigeria
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“R Kelly - Official Music Video 2025 (in prison). My Soul Cries Out…” reads the caption of a video shared on X.
The post has been shared 10,000 times since it was first published on January 12, 2025.
The video has also appeared in multiple posts on Facebook such as here and here. It is circulating in multiple countries including Zambia, Cameroon, Kenya, and South Africa.
R. Kelly, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, shot to fame with hits like “I Believe I Can Fly” and “Ignition”.
The 58-year-old singer is serving a 30-year jail term after he was found guilty of various sex crimes, including the exploitation of children (archived here).
He is now an inmate at a medium-security federal prison in North Carolina (archived here).
After his imprisonment, a bootleg of an album that he had previously recorded was briefly released in December 2022 before being taken off music platforms. At the time, a lawyer for Kelly said the release was not authorised (archived here).
AI-generated video
There have been no recent reports from R. Kelly nor his representatives about any new music videos.
The clip shared on social media contains visual inconsistencies that indicate it was AI-generated rather than filmed in prison.
The opening shot of the video shows a man wearing what appears to be an orange uniform like those of US prison inmates. However, the name “R.Kely” on the back is a misspelling.
Names are not used to identify inmates in the US; instead, prisoners are assigned unique identification numbers when they are jailed (archived here).
Throughout the clip, people are seen exhibiting robotic movements typical of AI-generated content.
At the one-minute mark in the video, a man with his hands cuffed behind his back has six fingers on one hand, which is a frequent error in AI-generated images (archived here).
Using the InVID-WeVerify video verification tool, we extracted keyframes from the video and ran a reverse image search.
This led to an upload of the same video to YouTube on January 3, 2025 – a week before the clip started circulating on social media (archived here).
In the caption, the owner of the YouTube account “MagXie_Dom” claimed credit for writing and creating the song using AI tools. They also included the hashtags #AIgenerated and #AItools.
A closer look at the YouTube account’s history shows that its owner has created other AI-generated music videos, featuring synthetic versions of Lady Gaga, Ed Sheeran and Ariana Grande. Some videos even feature duets, like Taylor Swift and Eminem.
AFP Fact Check has contacted the owner of the YouTube account for further comment and will update this article if they reply.
YouTube also shows the video as altered or synthetic content that was “significantly edited or digitally generated”.
AFP Fact Check has previously debunked a claim about R. Kelly being released from prison here.
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