An internet creator wants to know when content crosses the line from inspiration to theft.
If you’ve spend any time scrolling through TikTok lately, you may have seen a version of “Love Island” generated with artificial intelligence.
But, instead of featuring human contestants like Amaya Espinal and Bryan Arenales, this romance “reality” series is cast with … fruit.
In “Fruit Love Island,” characters like Bananito (a banana man), Strawberrina (a strawberry woman) and Grapelina (a grape woman) date around to pair up in a veritable fruit salad of AI slop.
AI slop is low-quality video, images, audio, text or all of the above, made with AI-generation tools like Midjourney, ChatGPT, Grok or Adobe Firefly, which pull from millions of sources.
The series is 23 episodes long, according to TikTok account @ai.cinema021, which just released the finale.
The creator behind it said on their TikTok board on March 24 they were “losing motivation” because the videos “take so long” and the animation generation is “getting so bad!” They also said they were receiving “so much hate” and the video removals were “tough.”
Eleven episodes remain as of this writing, but they have racked up 214 million cumulative views as of publication.
People have been hooked on the fruit-based drama. There are even viral videos about watching the fructose-filled show.
According to another TikToker, however, the idea for the uber-popular series was stolen from her.
“Months after I made a viral series called How Different Fruits Act (5M+ views) with original voices and mannerisms for each character, including platforming HUMAN art someone published a completely AI generated TikTok series about fruits dating (10M+ views per episode),” Joy Ofodu wrote on Threads on March 25.
“I am very tired,” she concluded.
The account behind “Fruit Love Island,” @ai.cinema021, did not immediately respond to TODAY.com’s request for comment.
“The first was actually how different airlines act,” Ofodu tells TODAY.com. “I really strive to create original comedy. I produce maybe 200 or 300 sketches or little skits online a year, and I’ve been doing this since 2020.”
Last year, Ofodu created a popular original video series about how various inanimate objects would behave if they could talk.
Racking up millions of views, the videos include impressions of airlines, television shows, makeup and, most pertinently, fruit.
For Ofodu’s fruit-based videos, the comedy creator and voice actor did several impressions, including a loud, yelling lemon, a snooty banana, a chipper, bouncy mango and a very egotistical strawberry.
She also introduced fruit “villains” such as a plotting tomato and a skittish olive.
“I think what made me happy is how much joy everyone else got, and how they started to spin up their own world around each of the characters,” Ofodu tells TODAY.com. “Coming up with theories on who’s dating who.”
If you’ve seen both series, the similarities are hard to deny: The female-identifying fruits in Ofodu’s videos fight over who’s the prettiest, and her mango character also expresses romantic interest in the banana character.
“I discovered it just going on TikTok, someone was complaining about fruits, AI, and it being slop,” she says. “I saw the series, and immediately, I guess, recognized in it my style of performing each of the fruits as unique characters with dating potential.”
Ofodu’s fruit videos inspired an up-and-coming hand-drawn animator, Martina Acurso Bettiolo, to put colorful faces on Ofodu’s original characters.
Ofodu says the pair are working together to bring her fruit characters — like a hardscrabble kiwi — to life.
Though Bettiolo’s drawings mostly differ from the AI series, there are also some similarities, like a strawberry character made to look like she has an extensive skincare routine.
“When you see your work imitated as an artist, of course, it is a flattering signal that you have your finger on the pulse of your audience,” Ofodu says, but she also feels it’s discouraging to be copied.
“You know, no one wants to be the person to say, ‘Hey, that’s mine.’ It doesn’t feel good, and it’s a drain on our resources,” she says. “If you are writing prompts, you’re just one step away from writing.”
Ofodu says she has many projects in the works in addition to her TikTok series. Human-created work takes time and effort, she says, but is all the more worthwhile because of it.
“I’m focusing on keeping my head up, making new things and knowing that someone’s theft or borrowing or imitation of my work doesn’t eradicate or invalidate my own idea, my own talent and my own ability,” she says.
“I can still wake up and make new things, and I will.”
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