Dear Gossips,

Today in “please make it stop” news, an AI-generated video went viral this week featuring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting on a rooftop over Jeffrey Epstein, prompting warnings from Hollywood creatives that this will jeopardise opportunities for actual human beings. I know that’s the most pressing concern here but the petty bitch in me is LOLing at the words “he was a good man” coming out of (fake) Brad Pitt’s mouth in reference to Jeffrey Epstein.

AI is affecting every aspect of our lives, and that includes gossip. A recent example: there’s been a photo circulating the last few days of Kim Kardashian and Lewis Hamilton kissing at the Benito Bowl. They were indeed at the Benito Bowl together but they were definitely not pictured kissing. A lot of people believed it though, because it looks real enough and, obviously, it’s very possible that they’ve been doing a lot of kissing and eventually, perhaps, we will get a legit shot of them kissing. But not yet.

And of course that’s the problem. AI advancement is happening concurrently with a rapid decline in media literacy, in combination with bad actors engaged in nefarious digital campaigns to advance their own narratives. Yesterday The Hollywood Reporter published a piece on “the Secret Smear Machine That’s Targeting Hollywood” about the cabal of operatives who’ve been engaging in online warfare with “anonymous slander sites” fueling some of the biggest celebrity scandals – and certain names associated with certain lawsuits keep coming up over and over again.

For those of us who refuse to succumb to the AI overlords though, awareness is obviously paramount, and being that much more discerning, even vigilant, about what we’re consuming. I also liked how Simu Liu reacted to that Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt mess – with judgement.

He’s right, this fight sequence here is hilariously bad. And, sure, this can be improved but humans improve too. I will die defending the superiority of human imagination, nothing a computer can come up with will ever be as interesting and fresh as what an actual person can come up with. On that note, while we’re talking about original ideas and building on Simu’s comment about martial arts, here’s a book recommendation and a story that should totally be a movie franchise or television series: The Legendary Mo Seto, by A.Y. Chan. 

Mo Seto is a 12-year-old girl who loves taekwondo and also dreams of becoming an action movie star. Her adventure takes her from middle school to fight tournaments and movie sets as she unravels mysteries and unearths family secrets. Most importantly though, she finds out about herself, learning to appreciate what’s unique to her, which is the ultimate source of her powers.  

The Legendary Mo Seto is the 2025 Silver Birch Fiction Award Winner Forest of Reading Silver Birch Award and has been embraced by students across Canada though its appeal is not limited to kids. When I was reading it, I could picture the characters and the action so vividly – and my hope is that more people fall in love with Mo Seto the way I have. Plus… a second book is on the way.

The Legendary Mo Seto: Martial Arts Star will be released in May. Click here for more information on author A.Y. Chan and The Legendary Mo Seto. Someone, please, get on the adaptation.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

Photo credits: The Legendary Mo Seto books by A.Y. Chan

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