ASAP Rocky accused of copying a 2019 parkour clip with AI

ASAP Rocky's music video for "Shroom Clouds" is accused of reusing another artist's footage through AI, according to a PetaPixel report published on October 27.

The two clips, posted side by side, show a roughly six-second sequence around the 2:56 mark: a figure somersaulting through a kaleidoscopic tunnel of concentric rings cut into a grassy field. The same sequence appears in a 2019 Instagram video made by the creative director and VFX artist Cache Bunny.

Emonee LaRussa, the artist who flagged the similarity, wrote that "There is practically no difference: the grass is the same, the shadows are the same," and asked at what point AI-generated content crosses the line into copyright infringement.

What Is Cache Bunny's 2019 Video?

The original is real footage. Parkour athlete Jason Paul shot it on a 360-degree camera on a football field, and Cache Bunny and LA video artist Ari Fararooy turned it into the ringed, tunnel-like effect the comparison turns on.

Paul said he was surprised at how similar the two versions looked. "When I thought about AI stealing my job one day, I was worried about those damn Boston Dynamics robots that keep getting better at parkour, not rappers," he told PetaPixel.

He asked who he could be mad at, and said the director of "Shroom Clouds" told him the video had been shot five years ago and was out of the director's hands. Paul says he is considering his options. No lawsuit has been reported.

Cache Bunny wrote on Instagram that "stealing artists' work is not ok, and that's not the precedent we want to set," and asked why the clip was not licensed or a version inspired by it made instead.

The video's credits list two AI artists. That shows AI worked on the production; it does not establish who produced the disputed sequence, and nobody involved has said the footage went unlicensed. Fans were unhappy about the AI credits, PetaPixel reports.

Rocky told Complex recently that he avoids making music from a prompt himself and does not judge those who do. He has not publicly answered the comparison.

For anyone publishing footage, the gap this story exposes is procedural. A clip that sits on Instagram for seven years is findable by any artist working with AI-assisted tools. Whether this one crossed a legal line is a question the people involved have not settled, and nobody has filed anything.

To keep a clip available for licensing and to prove where it came from, keep the original project files with their camera metadata, keep the dated public post, and put any reuse in writing before the edit ships.