What is the Will Smith eating spaghetti AI video?
On March 27, 2023, Reddit user chaindrop posted an AI clip of Will Smith eating spaghetti, made with ModelScope's text-to-video tool. Smith's face melted and the noodles behaved like liquid. It went viral and became an informal benchmark for how realistic AI video generation has gotten.
Why — the first-principles explanation
Early text-to-video models had a specific, structural weakness: they generated frames without a real model of objects persisting through time. Each frame was plausible on its own, but nothing enforced that the face in frame 12 was the same physical object as the face in frame 11. The result was a melting, boiling quality — features sliding across the skull, hands sprouting fingers, spaghetti fusing with lips.
Eating is close to the worst possible test for this. It combines a human face (which we are wired to scrutinize down to the millimeter), fine hand-tool coordination, and a food that is topologically nightmarish — dozens of separate strands that twist, break, and disappear into a mouth. A model has to keep identity stable, keep the fork solid, and track noodles that legitimately do change shape. Almost everything that can go wrong, does, and humans notice instantly.
That's why the prompt stuck. It's a cheap, repeatable stress test that anyone can run and anyone can judge. You don't need a benchmark score. You just look at it and know. As models improved, people re-ran the same prompt, and the clips became a rough visual timeline of the field: 2023's molten horror, then progressively steadier faces, then in May 2025 Google's Veo 3 producing a version with coherent facial structure, fluid motion, and synchronized audio.
It is not a scientific benchmark. There's no scoring rubric, no held-out test set, and the results depend heavily on prompt wording and cherry-picking. It's folklore that happens to be informative — a bit like judging a new camera by photographing text on a wall.
An example that makes it click
Think about a flipbook drawn by someone who forgets what they drew on the last page. Page one: a man with a round face. Page two: they redraw him, but the nose drifts left. Page three: the chin is wider. Flip it fast and the man appears to be melting, even though every single page looked fine on its own.
That's the 2023 clip. The model was a very talented artist with no memory. Now imagine the artist finally gets to keep the previous page in view while drawing the next one — the face stops sliding around. That's roughly the improvement between 2023 and 2025, and the spaghetti prompt is how the internet checks.
Key facts
- The original video was posted March 27, 2023, by Reddit user chaindrop to the r/StableDiffusion subreddit.
- It was generated with ModelScope's text-to-video model, an early open text-to-video system.
- Will Smith posted his own live-action parody to Instagram in February 2024, captioned 'This is getting out of hand!'
- In May 2025, Google's Veo 3 produced a version of the test with markedly better facial accuracy, motion, and synchronized audio.
- The clip is an informal community benchmark, not a scored or peer-reviewed evaluation of video models.
▶ The 60-second explainer (script)
The Will Smith eating spaghetti video is an AI-generated clip posted to Reddit on March 27th, 2023, by a user called chaindrop. It was made with ModelScope's text-to-video tool, and it is deeply unsettling. Smith's face melts and reassembles. The noodles behave like liquid. His hands do things hands don't do. It went viral instantly — and then it became something more useful: an informal test for how good AI video has gotten. Here's why this prompt, of all prompts. Early video models drew each frame separately, with no strong sense that the face in one frame was the same object as the face in the next. Like a flipbook by an artist with no memory — the nose drifts, the chin widens, and the man appears to melt. Eating spaghetti is the perfect trap: a human face we scrutinize obsessively, fine hand movements, and food made of dozens of twisting strands. Everything that can break, breaks. So people kept re-running it. Will Smith himself parodied it on Instagram in February 2024. And by May 2025, Google's Veo 3 produced a version with a stable face, fluid motion, and synced audio. It's not a real scientific benchmark — no scores, lots of cherry-picking. It's just a test anyone can run and anyone can judge.
What authoritative sources say
People also ask
Did Will Smith make the video?
No. A Reddit user made the original with AI in March 2023. Smith later posted a live-action parody of it on Instagram in February 2024.
Why spaghetti specifically?
It stacks the three hardest things for a video model at once: a human face, fine hand-and-fork motion, and dozens of separate noodle strands that twist and vanish. Failures are obvious to any viewer.
Is it a real benchmark?
Not in a scientific sense. There's no score, no standard prompt, and results are cherry-picked. It's community folklore that happens to be a decent eyeball test.
Can AI do it convincingly now?
Much better than 2023. Google's Veo 3 version in May 2025 showed a stable face, natural motion, and synced audio. Fine details like individual noodles and utensil physics still trip models up.