If your feed filled up with cats, footballers and cartoon characters rapping into one hanging microphone in an orange room this month, you have met the Hotel Lobby AI trend. Two faces go in, and the pair takes over Quavo and Takeoff's 2022 "Hotel Lobby" performance on A COLORS SHOW, shot for shot.
We built a generator for this format in September, which meant taking the original clip apart frame by frame. This post covers what the Hotel Lobby AI trend is, where it came from, the song behind it, and the part most explainers skip: why this one clip works so well as an AI template when thousands of other music videos don't.
What is the Hotel Lobby AI trend?
The Hotel Lobby AI trend is a short-video format on TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. Creators use AI video tools to replace Quavo and Takeoff with two new performers, keeping everything else from the original: the orange backdrop, the single microphone hanging between them, the locked-off camera and the back-and-forth delivery.
The two new performers can be anyone. Esquire Italia's round-up lists Barack and Michelle Obama, Messi and Ronaldo, Haaland and Bellingham, and Tobey Maguire and Willem Dafoe as their Spider-Man characters. Most everyday posts are simpler: two best friends, a couple, a parent and kid, or two pets.
It goes by several names, and they all mean the same format:
- Hotel Lobby AI trend, after the song
- Migos AI trend or Migos AI, after the group the two rappers came from
- Hotel Lobby TikTok trend or Hotel Lobby challenge
- Migos COLORS AI video or Unc & Phew AI trend, after the show and the duo's name
Where the Hotel Lobby AI trend came from
The 2022 COLORS performance
The source clip is "HOTEL LOBBY (Unc & Phew)" on A COLORS SHOW, performed by Quavo and Takeoff. The song came out on May 20, 2022, produced by Murda Beatz, Keanu Beats and Fabio Aguilar, and appeared on the duo's album Only Built for Infinity Links. The COLORS version is also on streaming services as its own track.
"Unc & Phew" is literal. Quavo is Takeoff's uncle, and the name was a nod to that family tie. Offset, the third member of Migos, is not in the video.
A common mix-up: the Hotel Lobby video was not filmed in a hotel lobby. "Hotel Lobby" is the song's title. The performance was shot on a COLORS set, which is a plain orange studio.
What A COLORS SHOW is
COLORSxSTUDIOS is a Berlin-based music platform. Its format is deliberately bare: one act, one solid-color backdrop, a microphone, and almost nothing else in frame. The point is to keep all attention on the performance.
That minimalism is the reason the Hotel Lobby AI trend exists at all. We come back to it below.
How it went viral in September 2026
The performance sat around for four years before it became a meme. According to Esquire Italia, COLORS had resurfaced the clip in 2025 and again in 2026. The spark came in early September 2026, when AI videos of two cats "performing" the song started circulating widely.
From there, people treated the clip as a template. The Tab described "thousands" of versions by late September, from Erling Haaland to Barack Obama to Spider-Man. Italian feeds ran their own wave with comedy duos, which Italian outlets including Esquire Italia covered.
On September 23, Quavo reposted the untouched original with the caption "Aye Take we viral again," as Esquire Italia reported. That repost pulled a fresh wave of viewers back to the source.
Why this clip became an AI template
Plenty of performances go viral again. Very few become a fill-in-the-blank format. After rebuilding the Hotel Lobby AI trend shot for our own tool, we think it comes down to four properties of the clip. We call them the template test. A clip that passes all four is unusually easy for today's AI video models to copy with new faces.
| Property | What the Hotel Lobby clip has | Why it matters for AI |
|---|---|---|
| Locked camera | One fixed, wide shot, no cuts | The model never has to invent a new angle, so faces stay stable |
| Empty set | Seamless orange backdrop, one mic | Nothing in the background to warp or flicker |
| Two fixed spots | One performer left, one right, for the whole clip | Each uploaded photo maps cleanly to one side |
| Turn-taking | One leads a line, the other reacts, then they switch | Reads as a real exchange, not two people moving in sync |
Most music videos fail the first two tests immediately: they cut every two seconds and move the camera. A COLORS performance passes all four almost by design, and the Hotel Lobby set is the most recognizable version of it.
The fifth ingredient: the models caught up
The format was just as copyable in 2022. What changed is that reference-to-video models arrived. Tools like Seedance 2.0 now accept several reference images and a reference video in one generation, so a model can take the motion from one clip and the identities from two photos.
Esquire Italia puts it plainly: the clip took off in 2026, not in 2022 or 2025, because of where AI image and video generation now stands. Two years ago, swapping two different faces into a shared shot without them melting together was mostly out of reach for casual users.
Why people keep making them
The template test explains why the Hotel Lobby AI trend is easy to make. It does not explain why people want to. Three things do:
- Any pair works. The joke is the pairing. Rivals, couples, a dog and a cat, two cartoon characters: the contrast between who they are and a hard-edged rap performance is the punchline.
- It is instantly recognizable. One orange frame and viewers know the reference before the first line.
- It is social by default. You need two people, so you tag the other one. That tag is distribution.
The debate: tribute or disrespect?
The Hotel Lobby AI trend is not uncomplicated. Takeoff was shot and killed in Houston on November 1, 2022, only months after the COLORS performance. For some fans, the clip is a memorial and should stay that way.
Others see the trend as the opposite of erasure. It sent a new wave of viewers back to one of the duo's best-known performances, and Quavo's own repost reads as an embrace rather than a complaint.
There is also the broader argument that follows every AI trend: using faces, voices and copyrighted work without permission, and where uploaded photos end up. Esquire Italia flags all of these.
If you join in, a few ground rules keep it respectful:
- Use your own photos, or photos of people who said yes.
- Keep Quavo's and Takeoff's own faces and voices out of it. The format borrows the setup, not the artists.
- Don't present a generated clip as real footage of anyone, especially a public figure.
How to join the Hotel Lobby AI trend
There are three ways in, from easiest to most hands-on:
- A dedicated template. Upload two photos and the tool supplies the scene, the moves and the timing. No reference video, no prompt.
- A motion-control tool such as Kling, with the original clip as the motion reference and your photos as the characters.
- A general video model such as Seedance 2.5 or Veo, driven by a detailed prompt and reference images.
We built our Migos AI trend video generator for the first route. You upload one photo for the left performer and one for the right. You pick the orange booth, a marble hotel lobby or a street corner as the performance to copy, and get an MP4 back, with the "Hotel Lobby" song in it if you turn sound on.
The other two routes need more setup and fail in more interesting ways. The biggest risk is the two faces swapping sides or blending into one. Our step-by-step guide on how to make a Hotel Lobby AI video walks through all three methods and how to fix the common failures.
Hotel Lobby AI trend FAQ
What song is used in the Hotel Lobby AI trend?
"Hotel Lobby (Unc & Phew)" by Quavo and Takeoff, specifically the version they performed on A COLORS SHOW in 2022. On TikTok, most creators add it from the sound library so their post joins the trend's sound page.
Who is in the original Hotel Lobby video?
Quavo and Takeoff of Migos, performing as the duo Unc & Phew. Offset is not in it.
When did the Hotel Lobby AI trend start?
In early September 2026, with AI videos of two cats doing the performance. Celebrity, character and couple versions followed within days and spread through the rest of September.
Is the Hotel Lobby AI trend the same as the Migos AI trend?
Yes. "Hotel Lobby AI trend", "Migos AI trend", "Hotel Lobby TikTok trend" and "Migos COLORS AI video" all describe the same format.
Is Hotel Lobby AI a filter?
Not in the camera-filter sense. It is a generated video: the AI builds a new clip of your two performers in the scene, instead of laying an effect over footage you filmed.
The short version
The Hotel Lobby AI trend is a 2022 COLORS performance that happened to pass every test for a perfect AI template: one locked shot, an empty orange set, two fixed spots and a real back-and-forth. Once reference-to-video models could hold two faces apart in one frame, the clip became a blank you fill with any pair you like.
If you want to try it with your own two photos, the Hotel Lobby AI generator is free to start, with the credit cost shown before you generate.
