‘Cursed’ pizza commercial generated by AI is terrifying the internet

While technology has the potential to take us all to a bright future, it also has the power to take us to some dark — and hilarious — (pizza) places in the meantime.

On April 24, Redditor u/PizzaLater posted a 30-second video to subreddit r/midjourney that went so viral that everyone from iconic pizza chains to billionaires took notice. In the fake ad, the Reddit user utilized artificial intelligence to create an advertisement for an imaginary pizza place called “Pepperoni Hug Spot.”

“Definitely wasted 3 hours of my life making this today... Everything is AI from the VO to the video and images. Assembled in After Effects,” wrote the Redditor in a post that has gone viral far beyond Reddit — on YouTube, Twitter and TikTok — and once you take a watch, you’ll understand why.

“Are you ready for best pizza of life? Bring friends down to Pepperoni Hug Spot,” the voiceover says in a stilted voice to a retro-sounding backing track. “Our chefs make pizza with heart and special touch.”

The video depicts “customers” who are “eating” at a table and a man who is supposed to be a chef “preparing a pizza” for the oven, but everything looks slightly ... off. Generated by AI, the audience is reminded constantly through the uncanny valley that the people aren't real — and neither is the pizza.

“Cheese, pepperoni, vegetable, and more secret things,” says the voiceover, which is also artificially generated, showing images that at the same time resemble the ingredients they’re supposed to be and look nothing like them. (What are the "secret things"???)

“Knock, knock, who’s there? Pizza magic,” the AI narrator says after a delivery driver (whose steering column is on the left side of his car) is shown delivering a pizza.

“Eat Pepperoni Hug Spot pizza. Your tummy say ‘Thank you.’ Your mouth say, ‘Mmm,’” the ad continues while showing a trio of women eating pizza in the oddest possible fashion, complete with bizarre cheese pulls and facial contortions out of a food-based nightmare. “Pepperoni Hug Spot: Like family, but with more cheese.”

Universal reaction to the commercial has been a joint combination of amazement, horror and laughter.

“This AI generated pizza commercial is terrifying and hilarious,” tweeted one person.

“I can’t say my mouth has ever done either of these things. And my arm didn’t become hot steaming pizza crust,” tweeted another.

“Dude this is so cursed I can’t handle it,” wrote someone else, this time on Reddit.

“U have fire content!!! This reminds me of almost pizza from SNL best Kristen wiig,” wrote another Twitter user, speaking of a classic "Saturday Night Live" skit where Wiig's mom character tries to sell her family on something that isn’t quite pizza.

A couple of big names also responded to a now-deleted tweet of the commercial.

“My heebies have been jeebied,” tweeted Pizza Hut in response to the video.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk simply responded with an exploding head emoji.

For the creator of the ad, who asked to be referred to by his username “Pizza Later,” realism wasn’t exactly the goal.

“Text-to-video technology is still in its infancy, so the quality of the clips remains quite rough. However, it was perfect for this spoof commercial,” Pizza Later tells TODAY.com in an email. “A simple prompt like ‘a woman eating a slice of pizza, TV commercial’ yielded fantastic results.”

He says his inspiration came during a day of work as a full-time motion designer and editor.

“To be honest, I did this because it was a slow workday, and I was curious about creating a full commercial using various AI technologies,” he says. “My only real goal was to share it with friends for a laugh.”

Pizza Later says that creating the video was the easiest part of the process, and that creating the simpler graphics and editing the final video together was the most time-consuming part of the project. “The entire process, from start to finish, took approximately 3 hours,” he says.

Using AI technologies Runway Gen2, Chat GPT4, Eleven Labs, Midjourney and Soundraw AI, the creator was able to produce the background music, voiceover, graphics, video and even generate the script for the ad. “I used Adobe After Effects to combine all the elements, adding title cards, transitions, and graphics,” he adds.

“The response has been overwhelming!” Pizza Later says, adding that he initially only posted the video on Reddit on Monday night, and by Tuesday morning, it was already appearing on other social media platforms. Seeing it spread, he whipped up a website that fit the uncanny vibe of the commercial and even created merch including hats and T-shirts.

“I figured I should capitalize on my 15 minutes of internet fame, right?” he jokes. “Honestly, it has been a fun week. I have made many people laugh, sold some merchandise, and established potential connections for the future.”

Pizza Later says that this commercial is only the beginning. “I am old enough to remember when YouTube first emerged, so I spent a considerable amount of time creating terrible comedy videos and parody commercials,” he says.

“I have several ideas in mind that I will be rolling out on my YouTube channel in the near future,” he adds. Pizza Later also plans to show folks how he made his Pepperoni Hug Spot commercial from start to finish in a future video. “I think most people assume this is a slow or complicated process when, in reality, AI does most of the heavy lifting!”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com