How to Make Your Own ‘Celebrity Elevator Selfie’

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source.

If you've been anywhere near TikTok lately, you've likely seen the proliferation of posts of people posing with celebrities in elevators, like this one. They are, of course, fake—products of AI image generation tools—but it's a fun kind of fakery that's super easy to be part of.

There are a wealth of free AI tools out there you can use to make any kind of photo or video, but if you want your celebrity-meeting-in-an-elevator post to fit in with the current trend, the easiest way is to use CapCut.

How to make a celebrity elevator selfie with Capcut

CapCut is the easiest option for making a video that fits the current TikTok trend. Here's how to do it.

• Make sure you have both CapCut and TikTok installed—they're both made by ByteDance, so they integrate seamlessly.

• Find an elevator celebrity video you like on TikTok

• Hit the "share" arrow and choose "copy link"

• Hit "back" and then "try this template."

• Confirm your choice and choose "Use AI template"

• Upload a picture of yourself and your celebrity crush.

• Hit "next" and CapCut will put it together.

• Hit publish to TikTok and voila, you're a meme!

Here's a video tutorial if that's more helpful.

How to make a celebrity elevator selfie with Gemini

Using Google's Gemini AI is another easy way to make an elevator picture. Here's how to do it:

• Go to Gemini's homepage.

• Drag a photo of yourself and one of your favorite celebrity into the window. (Mine is William Howard Taft.)

• Add a prompt. Here's what I used, so feel free to cut and paste if you like my results below: "Take these two photos and make a realistic, photo-like image of these people standing in an elevator. The camera is positioned in the top corner of the elevator, with a slight fisheye lens distortion pointing down toward them. The elevator walls are metallic with soft overhead lighting reflecting off the surfaces. Both people are looking up slightly toward the camera, capturing a cinematic and dramatic tone."

• Gemini will spit out a picture for you. Here's mine:

How to make a celebrity elevator selfie video

If you want an animated video, you can put the AI photo you've already made into an animation program. I used Grok for mine, because it's free and does a nice job.

• Add a prompt. It doesn't have to be elaborate—mine was something like, "The two men greet each other and fall in love."

• Download your video and post it to TikTok with the appropriate hashtags, and you'll end up with something like this.

View the full article