Videographers Claim ASAP Rocky Used AI to Rip Off Their Work

ASAP Rocky has been accused of using AI to directly steal the work of two video artists and a parkour athlete for his latest music video.

The video for Shroom Clouds shows a brief sequence (about 2:56) where the rapper is somersaulting through a kaleidoscopic effect.

But that six-second segment is identical to a 2019 Instagram video that was made by creative director and VFX artist Cache Bunny.

The striking similarity was pointed out by Emonee LaRussa (@em0n33y on Instagram). “There is practically no difference: the grass is the same, the shadows are the same,” says LaRussa, who asks, “At what point does AI-generated content cross the line into copyright infringement?”

The original clip is actual footage of parkour athlete Jason Paul that was filmed on a 360-degree camera and later transformed into artistic footage.

“I was quite surprised to see how similar his version was,” Paul says of ASAP’s video. “When I thought about AI stealing my job one day, I was worried about those damn Boston Dynamics robots that keep getting better at parkour, not rappers.”

Paul explains that he made the video with Cache Bunny and an L.A.-based video artist called Ari Fararooy seven years ago.

“We found ourselves on a football field with a little monopod and a 360 cam,” Paul says. “Ari and Cache Bunny had a bunch of concepts ready for me, and I added my unique spin of action to it. We took an afternoon to shoot this, and then Cache Bunny worked her VFX magic and the result blew me away.”

“I ask myself: how could this happen? And who can I be mad at? Like, I’m not mad at ASAP Rocky. I love the dude’s music. We even used it for one of our videos before,” he adds. “I’m sure he got his share of pay for clicks on that. It’d be nice if it went the other way.”

“I’m just thinking, okay, it’s not ASAP Rocky’s fault, it’s probably not his label’s fault; they don’t know every clip that was uploaded to Instagram and can spot a copy right away. Who can? But somebody along the line took that clip and thought it was fine to leave it that way.”

Paul says that he even asked the director of Shroom Clouds, who told him that he shot the music video five years ago and it’s “out of my hands.”

Fans of ASAP Rocky were disappointed to see that listed among the music video credits were two AI artists.

Paul says he is considering his options, while Cache Bunny says that she doesn’t know what to do, but wrote on her Instagram story that “stealing artists’ work is not ok, and that’s not the precedent we want to set.”

“I can’t understand why they didn’t just reach out to license the clip, or make their own version inspired by it,” she adds.

ASAP Rocky recently shared his thoughts about AI with Complex magazine, in which he suggested he eschews using AI to create music from a prompt but doesn’t judge others who do.