Kim Kardashian's Halloween Pumpkins Spark AI Accusations — Because "Kyle" and "Timothy" Got Carved Into Them

LOS ANGELES — Kim Kardashian threw a Halloween event this past weekend, and the pumpkins have launched a thousand conspiracy theories. She posted a bunch of footage to Instagram: a trail of pumpkins carved with portraits of various celebrities, including some of the Kardashian-Jenners themselves. Cute concept. Elaborate execution. One problem — the names.

Portraits of Kim and her partner, F1 racer Lewis Hamilton, were etched into one of the pumpkins. Same for Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker. And Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet. All very on-brand for a family that documents everything. But then the internet did what the internet does, and zoomed in — and eagle-eyed fans noticed that both Kylie and Timothée's names, etched in cursive underneath the portraits, were spelled wrong. Kylie became "kyle." Timothée became "timothy." Two of the most famous people on the planet, reduced to a pumpkin typo.

That alone would have been a perfectly good internet moment — the group chat writes itself. But some viewers also thought the celebrity portraits looked slightly off, and that's when the speculation took its 2026 turn: maybe the designs were AI-generated. One popular X post read, "Is this ai? Why is kylie spelled like kyle." Another X user asked, "who tf is kyle," while a third quipped "kyle ❤️ timothy" and a fourth wrote, "Kylie and Timothee's names both being spelled wrong please." Over on Reddit, one commenter posted, "Now why would they misspell kylie?!" and another added, "'Kyle and Timothy', organizers need to correct that shi."

"Is this ai? Why is kylie spelled like kyle"— a viral X post reacting to the pumpkin footage

Now, to be fair to the detectives: the suspicion has a logic to it. AI image generators are famously, hilariously bad at spelling — garbled text is one of the classic tells of synthetic imagery, right up there with too many fingers. A "kyle" where "Kylie" should be is exactly the kind of artifact that makes people reach for the AI explanation. In a year when every slightly-off image gets accused of being machine-made, a misspelled pumpkin never stood a chance.

But here's the thing worth saying plainly, because BuzzFeed said it too: the AI claims are entirely speculative. There is no evidence the designs were AI-generated. And there's a much simpler, much funnier explanation available — somebody carved the pumpkins, somebody wrote the names in cursive, and somebody spelled them wrong. Humans misspell things constantly. We have all watched a bakery write a name wrong on a birthday cake. A pumpkin is just a very large, very orange cake.

Honestly, the human-error theory is the better story. A hyper-produced Kardashian Halloween event — the kind of thing with a whole carved-pumpkin portrait gallery — undone by a typo is the most relatable thing to come out of that orbit in years. Billion-dollar beauty empires, private jets, Met Gala staircases — and somewhere in the middle of it all, somebody carved "timothy" into a gourd. That's not a scandal. That's a sitcom beat.

It also says something about where we are as a culture that "the portraits look slightly off" plus "a typo" now equals a full AI inquest. Portrait carving is an inherently weird medium — you're translating a human face into a vegetable with a knife, of course it looks slightly off, that's the whole art form. Every carved pumpkin portrait in history has looked slightly off. That's not evidence of AI. That's evidence of pumpkins.

The timing didn't help the discourse stay calm, either. The Kardashian-Jenners are in the middle of a full-court press — Season 8 of The Kardashians just premiered on Hulu, with the family balancing empire-building and real personal storylines, and the show remains one of streaming's most-watched reality machines. When every move the family makes is content, every piece of content gets forensically examined. A pumpkin doesn't get to just be a pumpkin anymore. It gets to be a discourse.

As for "kyle" and "timothy" — whether it was a carver's slip or something stranger, the names are out there now, and the internet has a way of making these things permanent. Somewhere tonight, somebody is ordering a custom pumpkin that just says "kyle ❤️ timothy," and honestly? That's the correct response. When life gives you a misspelled gourd, you make it the bit.