c/technology · by Some_Emo_Chick@lemmy.world · 52d

Scammers Sell Seeds for Exotic AI-Generated Flowers That Don’t Exist

https://www.404media.co/scammers-sell-seeds-for-exotic-ai-generated-flowers-that-dont-exist/

491 points · 74 comments · view on lemmy.world

74 Comments

notsosure@sh.itjust.works · 97 pts · 52d (4 replies)

Ah! An AI use case.

Tim_Bisley@piefed.social · 43 pts · 52d (2 replies)

Who knew AI would be useful for running scams......

VieuxQueb@lemmy.ca · 11 pts · 52d

Are you saying that the thing that is only good at lying and creating fake images/videos is good at scamming ? I am shocked !

phutatorius@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 51d

LLMs are truthiness generators.

Epp@lemmus.org · -13 pts · 52d

This can't be AI. AI only creates forgeries of existing art! It's incapable of creating anything new; I have it on good authority. Plus we'd know if AI had been used because all the water would be gone, the art stolen, and electricity would become unaffordable everywhere.

I've never used it and never will.

cmbabul@slrpnk.net · 73 pts · 52d (10 replies)

I wish I didn’t have ethics more often than I am proud of, I could’ve been scamming people for years and made a very comfy life for myself

CyberChicken@whatcom.social · 80 pts · 52d (7 replies)

Does cat face orchid bonsai sound like a scam to you?!?

cmbabul@slrpnk.net · 19 pts · 52d (3 replies)

Well I will make an exception for them as they look very polite

diabetic_porcupine@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 52d

Kindly give me your credit card information

a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 52d

And tasty.

rumba@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 51d

Your takeaway from that is polite? Jesus, please tell us what it takes to horrify you....

atrielienz@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 52d (1 reply)

It sounds like a fever nightmare.

justaman123@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 52d

They catch moths

LemmyFeed@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 52d

It might be a scam but I'm willing to pay to find out! What if it's actually real?

13igTyme@piefed.social · 2 pts · 52d

I think it depends who you target. For example "Freedom water" is great because it's just targeting MAGA dumbasses.

SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 51d

What if you scam people to trick them to plant native plants and flowers?

muhyb@programming.dev · 39 pts · 52d

I'm selling this sunflower seed. !!! Only 50 sun !!!

TheBannedLemming@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 51d (2 replies)

Those flowers are sending off some form of primitive flight or fight response in my brain. Their appearance is unnatural and unsettling.

brsrklf@jlai.lu · 3 pts · 51d

To be fair some real flowers look very weird, but those fake ones look like muppets.

rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 51d

Do you want Little Shop of Horrors? Because this is how you get Little Shop of Horrors!

crunchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 18 pts · 52d (3 replies)

If someone needs to use generative AI to market a product, then that product doesn't exist.

9point6@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 52d (1 reply)

I don't think the product actually existing is something scammers are typically concerned about

crunchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 52d

But it's a good rule of thumb for consumers. or at least for us to tell our parents.

Dremor@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 52d

I test products for a major online retailer, the amount of AI generated images is too damn high! Some of these producs are so bad I just give them away once the retention period (when you cannot sell or give them) is up. But sometimes you get some pretty good surprises (like those electric insect bite healer devices, that works surprising well).

Sabata11792@ani.social · 15 pts · 52d (4 replies)

Back in my day you got ripped off buying seeds from scammers good at Photoshop.

Duamerthrax@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 52d (3 replies)

"Good"

Sabata11792@ani.social · 5 pts · 52d

A slightly different shade of a flower is not THAT unreasonable.

rumba@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 51d (1 reply)

You know, the tomatoes... not on the same plant, but we could GMO some crazy ass tomatoes.

ThoughtEmporium, can you make us some glow in the dark tomatoes?

Duamerthrax@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 51d

Not those blues, purples or greens.

I'm growing some "The Eleven" tomatoes this year, which is a hybrid of a cherry tomato that was spliced with a Snapdraon flower to have higher levels of the anthocyanin, the antioxidant that's found in many blue produce.

The_v@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 52d

FYI the bottom right in the picture is a real sunflower call Sun Gold.

https://www.applewoodseed.com/product/sunflower-dwarf-sungold/

Of course only comes in yellow.

NottaLottaOcelot@lemmy.ca · 11 pts · 51d (2 replies)

Don’t buy seeds on Amazon, eBay, Etsy, etc - they are so full of scammers that it is impossible to weed out the legitimate sellers from the fake. And if you get fake ones, you may get invasive species that are harmful to the environment around you.

Most places have some great local sellers. But if you’re buying online I would recommend dedicated places like Canada’s Vesey’s Seeds, West Coast Seeds, or the US’s Prairie Moon

Sprinks@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 51d (1 reply)

Someone gifted me a bonsai kit off amazon that i cant use because every single seed packet is an invasive plant in my area. Unless the person who gifted it to me looked up every plant type, which is a big ask for them ability-wise, there was no way for them to have known from the product listing.

Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 51d

If you don't let it propagate or put it in the ground, how is it being invasive hindering you from growing it as a bonsai.
It's literally potted and pruned and brought up as a house plant.

Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 51d

Yet another reason to plant seeds of species that are native to your region, and purchase them from reputable sources

Dvixen@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 52d

Used to buy succulent seeds online, and sadly there were a fair number of scammers selling seeds for what appeared to be gorgeous, but non-existent photoshopped succulents.

Scammers gotta scam, and AI makes it easy.

Zephorah@discuss.online · 8 pts · 52d

Even before AI, this was a scam. Photoshopped pics. Fake seeds for legit plants, like wasabi, that are harder to find. And so on.

IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 52d (15 replies)

At some level of stupidity, I think we should let the scammer win.

like, that's just a stupid tax, they deserve to be scammed.

BehindTheBarrier@programming.dev · 18 pts · 52d

Honestly there's so many weird flowers out there it can be hard to tell truth from fiction. Yeah these are AI generated, but look at all the other flowers that are real:

Lambs ear
Sea holly
Teddy Bear sunflowers are real even
Protea "Little Prince"
Hoya Multiflora

Lots of very interesting flowers out there.

Evil_Incarnate@sopuli.xyz · 8 pts · 52d (8 replies)

When your mother starts buying this shit and spending big $$$ on stupid scams, you'll want them stopped.

Hawke@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 52d (1 reply)

Are you saying his mother is stupid?

phutatorius@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 51d

She must be, based on some of the things I got her to do.

IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world · -10 pts · 52d (5 replies)

If I go to someone and offer them a shoe box full of gold for 100$, no I wont open the box, and they agree, then I don't think that is a scam and more that said person is too stupid to be in public.

If that was the case and my mother's mind is so degraded then it is absolutely dangerous and irresponsible for me to let her live alone.

FauxLiving@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 52d

If I go to someone and offer them a shoe box full of gold for 100$, no I wont open the box, and they agree, then I don’t think that is a scam and more that said person is too stupid to be in public.

This is exactly the mindset of a scammer, 'well, if they're so stupid that they let me scam them then they deserve it'.

jumjummy@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 52d (3 replies)

Ok, but what if you slide the scale a little more and you do open the box, but it’s just gold colored stones. Slide a little more and it’s gold plated so even a surface scratch test shows gold. Keep going more and some of the stones are actual gold, but others aren’t.

See the problem? How much due diligence and expertise do you expect people to have before making any purchase?

IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 52d (2 replies)

my point is that if you have absolutely zero due diligence. then it's sort of your fault.

phutatorius@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 51d (1 reply)

The way I view it is that fraud is a crime, but we also have an ethical obligation not to let ourselves be marks. Same goes for lots of other crimes. Legal penalties are one deterrent. Raising the barrier to entry for a criminal activity by being a hard target is another. Both are good. But there will always be gullible, vulnerable people, and saying that they're fair game is much too close to eugenics. Healthy societies protect the vulnerable, but also train people to be less vulnerable when that's possible.

IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 51d

but when someone is that stupid, we cannot protect them. we usually instututionalise people who aren't able to keep themselves safe.

phutatorius@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 51d (1 reply)

Yeah, caveat emptor has always worked so well in the past. Let's not regulate anything.

IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 51d

if someone has zero critical thinking and does zero due diligence. no amount of protections will help them.

if anything, they need to be put in an institution for their safety.

lebkuchen@feddit.org · 4 pts · 52d (1 reply)

It's not really stupidity. Just think about stuff that you may buy without having the expertise to really judge the quality or if it is even possible. You might think that people are stupid when they do not know every plant. But do you know every tool, every tech gadget, every type of clothing and so on?

Dymonika@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 51d

Agreed, selfish liars are always on the worse side of the moral scale, no exceptions.

TronBronson@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 51d

No lmao these things are being sold on ETSY and Amazon and a bunch of businesses that need to protect their market participants lmfaoooo. the responsibility is on who ever is hosting these scams, I report them all the time.

Malyca@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 52d

They look like boobs

SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 51d

These free-for-all marketplaces are just going to suffocate under a barrage of scams. Ebay is already the world's biggest stolen goods fence.

Brewchin@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 52d

"Ah, yes... a 2m tall flower would look great next to my Day of the Triffids merch! Oh, and a starz-n-stripes container plant would be ideal for my shouty, flag-waving neighbour... Take my money!"

We are so doomed as a society.

Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 51d

funny how its mostly flowers that are either sunflowers, or daisies, are moslty in the asteracae family, not any other. succulents are mostly propagated by cuttings, or offshoots, rather than seeds because succulent from seeds takes a very long time to grow.

phillycodehound@indieweb.social · 2 pts · 51d

@Some_Emo_Chick Scammers are gonna find any way possible to scam. Using AI isn't surprising one bit, tbh.

Kellenved@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 52d

Dr Seuss ahh flowers

Reygle@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 52d (2 replies)

Also accurate, if cold, shadenfreude title:
A fool and their money are soon parted

Trail@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 51d (1 reply)

I prefer gparted over parted.

Reygle@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 51d

Oh I like you.

rumba@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 51d

Oh hell no, let this scam live. The more people that get fucked over by AI, the more chance we'll have of making the fucking point.