Just as they once did surgery on a grape, they put fruit on Love Island. But they did it with AI. And who “they” is in this case we may never know, because it appears the anonymous creator has already deleted their account.
If you’ve been out of the loop about Fruit Love Island, it should come as no surprise by now that millions watched this on TikTok:
Fruit Love Island is the world’s hottest new TV show.
The first episode dropped a week ago, and it’s gone vertical.
Hundreds of millions of people are tuning in, thousands are voting, and celebrities are posting about it.
It’s entirely AI-generated and airs on TikTok 🤯 pic.twitter.com/RAbBVlIJvT
— Justine Moore (@venturetwins) March 21, 2026
What is Fruit Love Island? It couldn’t be more straightforward. Like the host says in the introductory video above, it’s a place where “eight single fruits are about to flirt, fight, and trust.” Got it?
It’s an homage to, or perhaps a parody of, reality TV’s Love Island, but with the popular AI brainrot aesthetic. Some Baudrillard scholar can sort out how any of those words actually fit together. Watching it makes you feel a strange sense of unreality, not about what you’re watching, which is cartoony and obviously not real, but a creeping sense of unreality permeating the wider world.
But in terms of what’s on your screen when you watch it, it’s brightly-colored AI-generated fruit people in bathing suits making out and punching each other.
In the Wall Street Journal’s telling, Fruit Love Island “could be proof that AI content can actually captivate viewers,” but is there still any question that AI content can seduce, charm, and shock people with arresting and confusing images and sounds? Let’s stipulate once and for all that, yes, AI content can captivate. Crazy Frog captivated millions once upon a time, too. No AI necessary.
Anyway, the Journal says each of the first 21 episodes achieved 10 million views on TikTok. By at least one blog’s account, Fruit Love Island’s explosion of viral success took ten days.
A backlash was inevitable. On Reddit about five days ago, the AI critical community started venting about it. Some seemed genuinely frustrated that it existed. “I got so pissed seeing so many people watching it (including my own little sister) I started making my own ‘love island’ series with toys,” wrote Reddit user Delphoxqueen2. “It’s not great, but it’s a billion times better than this just because of the fact that it’s made by a human.”
Some doubted Fruit Love Island was actually attracting millions of human viewers. “whoever made this, paid a lot of money for bots on their videos,” wrote PossibleEconomics673.
Was the success of Fruit Love Island inflated by inorganic means? It’s an interesting question, but what would that even mean when we’re talking about AI-generated fruit people on TikTok? Still, it’s informative to look at a viral X post from user @lalisattawo, who posted “i NEED them to win” with pics of two Fruit Love Island characters:
i NEED them to win pic.twitter.com/OVsBhnSExh
— ً. (@lalisattwo) March 21, 2026
The post received a community note accusing the person behind it of not actually being a crazed fan expressing an opinion, but instead pretending to be a crazed fan in order to post “u need therapy” on another account and rack up engagements.
The AI.cinema021 TikTok account that apparently belonged to the creator is gone now, but looking back on how things played out, it seems likely that Fruit Love Island haters started brigading the creator, probably with reports for abuse, spam, or copyright infringement. Having to deal with account suspensions and content removals would certainly make running the account a hassle.
A publication called The Cool Down, informs me that “The account has subsequently had ‘half’ of its videos removed from the platform, according to its TikTok story on Wednesday, which has since been deleted.”
Another cache of archived posts from the creator says they wrote “what do I do guys these ppl spam reported my videos im gonna cry,” and “I think I’m gonna turn schizophrenic if TikTok doesn’t look at my appeals rn.” This quickly transitions into appeals for help from their fans, threats directed at AI critics that they will use “all ur f*cking clean water,” and then complaints about lost followers as the account struggled to churn out content and deal with viral notoriety at the same time.
“ILL BURN DOWN THE LOVE ISLAND VILLA IF I LOSE ANY MORE FOLLOWERS” reads one of the angrier comments. Hopefully this refers to the Fruit Love Island Villa, which is virtual, not the set of the actual TV show.
Yesterday, the story apparently came to an abrupt end, with what appears to be a TikTok story from the Fruit Love Island owner, AI.cinema021, posting the following:
“Aright f— all you b—–s. No more fruit love island 🥺. Since people so obsessed with it 🤣 all my videos banned I make no money. I guess I am being targeted, bc no other ai account getting f—-d 🤣 😬. Yall heard it from bananito himself.. bye✌️”
The text is superimposed next to a smiling picture of Bananito, the buff banana character from Fruit Love Island, if that part wasn’t clear.
And that was evidently just before the AI.cinema021 TikTok account was deleted entirely. The statement now exists on Reddit as a post from WholeCardiologist565, titled “Holy fkn s*it guys we did it the fruit love island acc stopped posting.”
Three days ago, when the Fruit Love Island meltdown was still ongoing, a Redditor named thegamer7antipig posted in the subreddit r/DefendingAIArt to express their confusion as to why some people seemed pleased that Fruit Love Island looked like it would soon go away.
“Like yes it’s stupid and it is the definition of ai slop, but why are they celebrating that a series they don’t care about or watch ever is going down. Clearly alot of people liked it or else it wouldn’t have gone so damn viral. So why are they celebrating that people who liked it wont be able to watch it anymore?”
Meanwhile, over on TikTok, Fruit Love Island imitators are still at it. In one post, PinaPina, the pineapple character, is angrily guzzling water from a bottle that says “WAIER” on it. The text on the image says “Sorry PinaPina is taking all the clean water 😢” As I write this, that post is still racking up angry comments.
Source link
#Happened #Fruit #Love #Island #Won
![OpenAI’s existential questions | TechCrunch
OpenAI has been all over the news recently, whether that news is about acquisitions, competition with Anthropic, or bigger debates about AI’s impact on society.
On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I did our best to round up all the latest OpenAI news. While the company’s latest acquisitions seem to be classic acqui-hires, Sean suggested they also address “two big existential problems that OpenAI is trying to solve right now.”
First, with the team behind personal finance startup Hiro, the company may be hoping to come up with a product that has “more hooks than just a chatbot, and maybe something worth paying more for.” And with new media startup TBPN, OpenAI could be looking to “better shape its image in the public eye, which lately has not been great.”
Read a preview of our conversation, edited for length and clarity below.
Anthony: [We have] two deals that are worth mentioning, one is that OpenAI acquired this personal finance startup called Hiro. And that comes after another deal that was literally announced when we were recording our last episode of Equity, so we didn’t get to talk about it: OpenAI had also acquired TBPN — a business talk show, like a new media company.
And I think both of these deals are pretty small compared to the scale of OpenAI. These are not things that people expect to really change the course of their business or anything like that, but they’re interesting because it suggests that there’s still this [attitude of,] “Let’s try out different things.”
Especially [with] the TBPN deal […] particularly at this time when it feels like OpenAI, from all the reporting we’re reading, is also trying to really refocus on making ChatGPT and its GPT models really competitive in an enterprise context with programmers.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
Is running a tech talk show, should that really be on the to-do list?
Kirsten: No, this should not be on the to-do list. That’s it.
I do want to mention Hiro because to me, that’s an interesting one, because Julie Bort, our venture editor, super talented, she wrote about this and was I think the first to write about it. She dug in a little bit and basically this looks like an acqui-hire. The company is folding. They basically said, “By this date, you won’t be able to access this anymore.”
This is a personal finance startup. And they only launched two years ago. So this absolutely is about getting talent on board. So I’m very curious to see if OpenAI is going to be just absorbing them into the ether at OpenAI, or if they’re actually interested in some sort of personal finance product that they want to work on. To me, it’s not really clear.
Sean: I think you look at both of these as acqui-hires to a certain extent. I mean, the TBPN acquisition, allegedly they are going to retain their editorial independence on the show that they make every day. And all respect to those guys who’ve put that out there and gotten it off the ground so quickly and grown it into what it has become.
I think any person who follows the media should have a healthy dose of skepticism that when you acquire something like that and you put the people who make the show under the org of the public policy people and comms or marketing adjacent people higher up at the company making the acquisition, that you could have good questions about whether or not saying “editorial independence” is enough. It’s not an incantation that just works.
But you know, what’s interesting to me about these two, while they are similar in their acqui-hire-ness, I think they both represent two major problems that OpenAI is facing.
One is Hiro. OpenAI has a very successful product in ChatGPT. As far as whether or not that will actually ever make them enough money to become a sustainable business that’s not raising the largest private rounds in the world, ever, to keep things going, is a big question. And they also seem to be struggling to keep up on the enterprise side of things where the real money seems to be, so bringing in a team like this seems like taking a shot at, “What else can we do?”
The guy who founded Hiro seems to have a serial entrepreneur streak of creating consumer apps, and so this seems to me like a bet on them being able to come up with something else that may have more hooks than just a chatbot, and maybe something worth paying more for.
And then TBPN is an acquisition made to help better represent what the company does and better shape its image in the public eye, which lately has not been great and certainly is under more questions now than just a few weeks ago, because Ronan Farrow just led a report at The New Yorker that dropped suspiciously right around the time that this and a couple other announcements from OpenAI came out last week.
I think those are two big existential problems that OpenAI is trying to solve right now.
Kirsten: So the thing that you didn’t say is, there’s Anthropic kind of looming in — not in the shadows, I mean, they’re very much taking up a lot of space here — but they’re having a lot of success on the enterprise side of things.
It feels like these guys are competitors and they also feel like very different companies in a lot of ways. Anthony, I’m wondering if you see them as direct competition to OpenAI? Or [are they] just finding their stride in enterprise and in a way, these two companies are clearly going to coexist and they’re really not directly competing with each other — maybe on talent, but not necessarily as we initially thought of them?
Anthony: I think they’re directly competing with each other. There’s definitely a scenario where if AI as an industry, as a technology, is as successful as its proponents hope for, they could both be very successful companies, they could just be the one and two. And the success of one does not necessarily mean that the other will just fade into obscurity.
And again, none of this is official, but there’s just been a lot of reporting around how it seems like OpenAI, more than anyone, is obsessed with and upset about Anthropic’s rise.
Our reporter Lucas [Ropek], he did a great piece over the weekend about the HumanX conference, where he was talking to everyone there and they’re sort of like, “Yeah, ChatGPT is fine, too,” but like they were all about Claude Code. And I think that is exactly what OpenAI is worried about.
Because again, in theory, there could be many other opportunities for generative AI, but it feels like the big growth area, the area where the most money is and where they could at least see a path to having a sustainable business in the future, is in these enterprise and coding tools.
#OpenAIs #existential #questions #TechCrunchAnthropic,Equity podcast,OpenAI](https://i2.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/GettyImages-2266645295.jpg?w=1024&ssl=1 "OpenAI’s existential questions | TechCrunch
OpenAI has been all over the news recently, whether that news is about acquisitions, competition with Anthropic, or bigger debates about AI’s impact on society.
On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I did our best to round up all the latest OpenAI news. While the company’s latest acquisitions seem to be classic acqui-hires, Sean suggested they also address “two big existential problems that OpenAI is trying to solve right now.”
First, with the team behind personal finance startup Hiro, the company may be hoping to come up with a product that has “more hooks than just a chatbot, and maybe something worth paying more for.” And with new media startup TBPN, OpenAI could be looking to “better shape its image in the public eye, which lately has not been great.”
Read a preview of our conversation, edited for length and clarity below.
Anthony: [We have] two deals that are worth mentioning, one is that OpenAI acquired this personal finance startup called Hiro. And that comes after another deal that was literally announced when we were recording our last episode of Equity, so we didn’t get to talk about it: OpenAI had also acquired TBPN — a business talk show, like a new media company.
And I think both of these deals are pretty small compared to the scale of OpenAI. These are not things that people expect to really change the course of their business or anything like that, but they’re interesting because it suggests that there’s still this [attitude of,] “Let’s try out different things.”
Especially [with] the TBPN deal […] particularly at this time when it feels like OpenAI, from all the reporting we’re reading, is also trying to really refocus on making ChatGPT and its GPT models really competitive in an enterprise context with programmers.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
Is running a tech talk show, should that really be on the to-do list?
Kirsten: No, this should not be on the to-do list. That’s it.
I do want to mention Hiro because to me, that’s an interesting one, because Julie Bort, our venture editor, super talented, she wrote about this and was I think the first to write about it. She dug in a little bit and basically this looks like an acqui-hire. The company is folding. They basically said, “By this date, you won’t be able to access this anymore.”
This is a personal finance startup. And they only launched two years ago. So this absolutely is about getting talent on board. So I’m very curious to see if OpenAI is going to be just absorbing them into the ether at OpenAI, or if they’re actually interested in some sort of personal finance product that they want to work on. To me, it’s not really clear.
Sean: I think you look at both of these as acqui-hires to a certain extent. I mean, the TBPN acquisition, allegedly they are going to retain their editorial independence on the show that they make every day. And all respect to those guys who’ve put that out there and gotten it off the ground so quickly and grown it into what it has become.
I think any person who follows the media should have a healthy dose of skepticism that when you acquire something like that and you put the people who make the show under the org of the public policy people and comms or marketing adjacent people higher up at the company making the acquisition, that you could have good questions about whether or not saying “editorial independence” is enough. It’s not an incantation that just works.
But you know, what’s interesting to me about these two, while they are similar in their acqui-hire-ness, I think they both represent two major problems that OpenAI is facing.
One is Hiro. OpenAI has a very successful product in ChatGPT. As far as whether or not that will actually ever make them enough money to become a sustainable business that’s not raising the largest private rounds in the world, ever, to keep things going, is a big question. And they also seem to be struggling to keep up on the enterprise side of things where the real money seems to be, so bringing in a team like this seems like taking a shot at, “What else can we do?”
The guy who founded Hiro seems to have a serial entrepreneur streak of creating consumer apps, and so this seems to me like a bet on them being able to come up with something else that may have more hooks than just a chatbot, and maybe something worth paying more for.
And then TBPN is an acquisition made to help better represent what the company does and better shape its image in the public eye, which lately has not been great and certainly is under more questions now than just a few weeks ago, because Ronan Farrow just led a report at The New Yorker that dropped suspiciously right around the time that this and a couple other announcements from OpenAI came out last week.
I think those are two big existential problems that OpenAI is trying to solve right now.
Kirsten: So the thing that you didn’t say is, there’s Anthropic kind of looming in — not in the shadows, I mean, they’re very much taking up a lot of space here — but they’re having a lot of success on the enterprise side of things.
It feels like these guys are competitors and they also feel like very different companies in a lot of ways. Anthony, I’m wondering if you see them as direct competition to OpenAI? Or [are they] just finding their stride in enterprise and in a way, these two companies are clearly going to coexist and they’re really not directly competing with each other — maybe on talent, but not necessarily as we initially thought of them?
Anthony: I think they’re directly competing with each other. There’s definitely a scenario where if AI as an industry, as a technology, is as successful as its proponents hope for, they could both be very successful companies, they could just be the one and two. And the success of one does not necessarily mean that the other will just fade into obscurity.
And again, none of this is official, but there’s just been a lot of reporting around how it seems like OpenAI, more than anyone, is obsessed with and upset about Anthropic’s rise.
Our reporter Lucas [Ropek], he did a great piece over the weekend about the HumanX conference, where he was talking to everyone there and they’re sort of like, “Yeah, ChatGPT is fine, too,” but like they were all about Claude Code. And I think that is exactly what OpenAI is worried about.
Because again, in theory, there could be many other opportunities for generative AI, but it feels like the big growth area, the area where the most money is and where they could at least see a path to having a sustainable business in the future, is in these enterprise and coding tools.
#OpenAIs #existential #questions #TechCrunchAnthropic,Equity podcast,OpenAI")
Post Comment