On the surface, Reese Witherspoon seems like one of the most unproblematic celebs out there. However, the “Legally Blonde” star has actually stirred up quite a bit of drama online over the years. One of her most recent bouts of internet infamy happened when she championed the incorporation of AI in entertainment for women during a joint Glamour feature with her “Morning Show” co-stars. “I’m always looking forward to how media is evolving and how I can help be part of bringing women along in those emerging industries,” explained Witherspoon. “And now we’re doing it with AI. It’s so, so important that women are involved in AI … because it will be the future of filmmaking.” She continued, “And you can be sad and lament it all you want, but the change is here. It will never be a lack of creativity and ingenuity and actual physical manual building of things. It might diminish, but it’s always going to be the highest importance in art and in expression of self.”

Unsurprisingly, the star’s opinion ignited a fierce social media debate, in which many users enthusiastically disagreed with her stance. On Reddit, for example, fans were particularly vocal about their disappointment. “Oh, cool, so there’s no creative license at all,” commented one user. “Yes, it makes sense. Who needs artists when you can have a machine make art! I’m sure it understands and will give us stories that connect us. Oh, please sell out.” A second user called out the star for using women to gain support for the cause. “It really annoys me when something is obviously inherently bad, but instead of pushing back, someone will try to turn it into a social cause,” they wrote. “It’s not actually valid to take up AI because mostly men are doing it. Reese continues to disappoint.” Meanwhile, a third user suggested that Witherspoon had financial incentives for promoting the use of AI in film and TV. “Probably just bought shares in some AI movie startup,” they wrote.

Unfortunately for Witherspoon, the AI debate is far from her only public shaming.

The response to Reese Witherspoon coming out in support of AI in entertainment was very similar to the reaction she got when she supported the NFT industry, as it was a celebrity scandal no one was expecting. In 2022, Witherspoon announced that her production company, Hello Sunshine, would be partnering with World of Women, an NFT company featuring artwork exclusively created by women. “While the crypto and NFT space is largely dominated by men, there are inspiring leaders like World of Women creating incredible communities for women during this massive shift for media and technology,” shared Witherspoon in February of that year, per Variety. “We’re proud to partner with WoW to expand their universe of characters and to develop innovative scripted and unscripted content. We look forward to engaging with the remarkable WoW community at every step of this partnership and creating opportunities for WoW holders to work collaboratively with Hello Sunshine on transforming the WoW art into powerful stories.”

The partnership, however, didn’t come without backlash. One fan on Reddit, for example, claimed they didn’t respect people who boosted NFTs. “I immediately lose all respect for any famous person attaching their name to this scam (and there’s a growing number of them),” they wrote. “I’m disappointed these people have such little respect for their fans, and are using their personal brand to suck naive people into buying NFT garbage.” Meanwhile, a second fan threw major shade Witherspoon’s way when offering up an idea for her first collaboration with World of Women. “NFTs are pretty well synonymous with scams right now, to the point that it would probably be smoother to make a series about a morally dubious lead who gets into it specifically to con people,” they commented.

Reese Witherspoon’s book club has become a big deal in literary circles, especially since her production company started optioning rights to the most popular selections. That’s why fans were initially excited when Witherspoon not only chose “Where the Crawdads Sing” as one of her book club picks, but also helped make it into a movie. Unfortunately, Witherspoon didn’t do her research because the author, Delia Owens, had a decades-long controversy attached to her name. Owens and her husband have been suspects in a murder in Zambia for over 30 years. “What most of Crawdads’ fans don’t know,” Laura Miller wrote for Slate (via Time), “is that Delia and Mark Owens have been advised never to return to one of the African nations where they once lived and worked, Zambia, because they are wanted for questioning in a murder that took place there decades ago.” In case you didn’t know, they were accused of being involved in a murder in Zambia over 30 years ago.

Given that Witherspoon’s celebrity had given Delia’s book a broader audience, many fans rushed to blame her for the big increase in book sales and the success that followed. But, to be fair, most of the ire was reserved for Owens herself and the other entities involved in the alleged murder. “So they executed someone on camera as part of a documentary being made about them?” wrote one user. “And ABC actually decided to air that footage? Like, nothing was weird to them about that?” A second user replied, “That’s the thing that is really getting me here. the second they brought up on-camera murder, i could feel my eyebrows trying to reach my hairline. like what the hell??”

Last but not least, fans really took issue with Reese Witherspoon for a much more minor reason in January 2024. The beloved actor uploaded a since-deleted video to her TikTok account showing her scooping and eating snow that had fallen on her car after she mixed in a bunch of sweet add-ins, like chocolate, coffee, and caramel. It’s clear from a repost of the video that Witherspoon was beyond excited about her creation, but social media felt differently. It took no time for people to rush and share why eating snow — even snow that didn’t touch the ground — wasn’t a good idea.

“She’s cute but this doesn’t seem very clean. A bird could have pooped in the ice pile,” tweeted one user on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Girl out of all things fu**ing car snow???!!” replied a second user, adding, “Seriously like u could of gone in the fu**ing woods stood there for ten min and got some fresh a** snow but you choose to get dirty ass dead bug car snow.” Meanwhile, a third didn’t believe her treat was nearly as satisfying: “I want the unedited one-cut version. I don’t believe a Hollywood star would eat snow like that. It’s gross and full of bacteria,” they wrote.