We talk too much about hallucination and too little about the more mundane elephant in the room that AI, whatever its effectiveness, will simply be used more for scam and deception than positive uses.
high_na_euv · 2026-06-30 16:31:07 UTC
I dont think a few scams here and there outweight positive usecases
siriusastrebe · 2026-06-30 16:49:20 UTC
We're about to see our political campaigns flooded with fake videos, slander, fabrications, and misinformation. Used to be you could be relatively certain if something was a video it was too much effort to be photoshopped. Not true any more.
high_na_euv · 2026-06-30 16:57:03 UTC
Maybe it will make ppl to be skeptic?
ceejayoz · 2026-06-30 16:58:03 UTC
I take it you haven't met people.
kube-system · 2026-06-30 17:10:25 UTC
I’m curious as to both of your media markets, because my perception is that this is already the mainstream.
AI generated political ads are something I see multiple times per day. Not even just shadow actors on social media, but also TV ads from registered lobbying groups
And comment sections of the social media I consume are filled with “AI!” on any post about a politically sensitive topic even from reputable sources.
autoexec · 2026-06-30 17:22:40 UTC
The same was true for photographs yet we survived following the invention of photoshop. The truth is that you don't even need video or photos to trick stupid people. Text alone allows for political campaigns flooded with slander, fabrications, and misinformation and some percentage of the population will fall for it. I'd say the best thing we can do is better educate the public to think critically and become media savvy, but instead we'll be forcing our children to read bible verses in school so I don't see the situation improving any time soon.
Planktonne · 2026-06-30 16:51:45 UTC
It's not just a few scams though. It's a lot of scams, and a lot of propaganda, and a lot of CSAM, and even beyond the overtly negative, it's a tidal wave of slop in music, in publishing, in everything else.
Some technology has more negative use cases than positive; this appears to be one of them.
cwillu · 2026-06-30 16:53:42 UTC
I don't think a few stock photo replacements here and there outweigh the negative use-cases.
slopinthebag · 2026-06-30 17:02:09 UTC
I find it fascinating that this is a popular anti-bitcoin argument, but (often) the same people making that argument actually find AI useful. So they experience a mild case of cognitive dissonance.
hansvm · 2026-06-30 18:32:01 UTC
The Bitcoin argument is usually paired with "there are no non-scam use cases which aren't better served by other methods/tech."
oneshtein · 2026-06-30 17:20:07 UTC
Just make scams illegal — problem solved.
Smoosh · 2026-06-30 23:50:16 UTC
If only it were that easy! The economy would collapse if scams were stopped. There would be no progress. The president would be poor. We are already losing the scam war with china, this would just hand victory to them. Is that the world you want to live in? /s
But seriously, I wonder how much of the economy is scam activity?
namdnay · 2026-06-30 16:19:08 UTC
those oversized "teddy bear" pictures are horrifying, looks like something from day of the triffids
jdw64 · 2026-06-30 16:32:30 UTC
When I work as a freelancer, I get a lot of requests lately to create fake AI manipulated images for scams. Especially requests to generate fake IDs using AI. Personally, I feel that there is a need for AI watermarks on image generation models, but at the same time, if watermarks become mandatory, it would effectively kill the business viability of those models. It feels like the same problem as guns and gun control.
armchairhacker · 2026-06-30 18:13:44 UTC
AFAIK the big models have watermarks that are supposed to be hard to remove. But I don’t think it’s possible on local models: not just questionable because it would prevent full open-source, but if someone discovers a way to easily remove a local model’s watermark, it will work permanently.
It’s a bit analogous to New York and California regulating 3D printers (which I disapprove). But more invasive, because local models are software, and here the danger is not guns but photos.
jagaerglad · 2026-06-30 18:46:25 UTC
may I ask the reason your clients don't just generate these things themselves?
jdw64 · 2026-06-30 19:00:39 UTC
Usually, this kind of work is difficult with large models. They either get rejected by policy or don't produce stable results. So you have to use local models, but local models have inconsistent quality and the setup is complicated.
That's why clients usually hear about keywords like LoRA somewhere and say, 'I heard you can generate it with this method.' But in reality, they don't know how to install a local model, serve it, run it, or stabilize the results. And that's where freelancers like me come in.
As a freelancer, it's hard to completely ignore this trend. Because freelancers like me aren't inside a company, we're usually a step behind on the latest news. So we end up searching through the information and keywords that clients share with us, organizing it, and following industry trends that we pick up when we visit companies for consulting.
In any case, most clients aren't completely clueless—they usually provide keywords like 'I heard you can do it this way' and make their reques
aaronbrethorst · 2026-06-30 16:37:10 UTC
All from well-known brand SheilaDegisn
gwerbin · 2026-06-30 21:23:52 UTC
They don't want people with good instincts buying.
v-w-v-w · 2026-06-30 16:44:04 UTC
Thank you for your purchase. Here is the seed to receive beautiful flowers: 735037659271543.
Use this with model Juggernaut XL v11 at 1280x720, DPM++ 2M Karras and hires fix set to 1.4. Unfortunately, we are unable to accept returns at this time.
codemog · 2026-06-30 17:03:03 UTC
This should inform entrepreneurs: people want unique and beautiful flowers. I don’t see why it’s not possible to do at least some modifications with gene editing methods.
kg · 2026-06-30 17:10:15 UTC
What the world needs is more new and innovative invasive species that were cooked up in a lab to look cool :)
codemog · 2026-06-30 20:29:16 UTC
Care to explain why making a sunflower a different color is harmful? Why respond to things with the least charitable interpretation?
speak_plainly · 2026-06-30 17:04:52 UTC
Medieval grifts are back. We urgently need a modern Jack and the Beanstalk movie.
esafak · 2026-06-30 17:06:58 UTC
Image generators should embed their prompts, and eBay should run a slop detector.
Chu4eeno · 2026-06-30 17:18:05 UTC
I believe grok embeds some modern standard provenance metadata (haven't checked what data it contains though), and Google uses their own invisible watermarking (that unfortunately only google can detect...).
sph · 2026-06-30 18:08:51 UTC
And we should solve world hunger while we’re at it.
pixel_popping · 2026-06-30 17:18:37 UTC
Pretty smart, pretty smart.
fer · 2026-06-30 17:22:22 UTC
I've seen this for approximately forever, especially poppies (they got creative with that amount of petal surface). They were simply photoshopped back then.
DivingForGold · 2026-06-30 18:04:40 UTC
I have been lied to multiple times, sellers claiming to sell me seeds for the relatively rare pink flowered version of "Pride of Barbados", most off Ebay, from foreign countries.
All of them germinated and grew to the common orange-yellow version.
Comments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_orchid
AI generated political ads are something I see multiple times per day. Not even just shadow actors on social media, but also TV ads from registered lobbying groups
And comment sections of the social media I consume are filled with “AI!” on any post about a politically sensitive topic even from reputable sources.
Some technology has more negative use cases than positive; this appears to be one of them.
But seriously, I wonder how much of the economy is scam activity?
It’s a bit analogous to New York and California regulating 3D printers (which I disapprove). But more invasive, because local models are software, and here the danger is not guns but photos.
That's why clients usually hear about keywords like LoRA somewhere and say, 'I heard you can generate it with this method.' But in reality, they don't know how to install a local model, serve it, run it, or stabilize the results. And that's where freelancers like me come in.
As a freelancer, it's hard to completely ignore this trend. Because freelancers like me aren't inside a company, we're usually a step behind on the latest news. So we end up searching through the information and keywords that clients share with us, organizing it, and following industry trends that we pick up when we visit companies for consulting.
In any case, most clients aren't completely clueless—they usually provide keywords like 'I heard you can do it this way' and make their reques
Use this with model Juggernaut XL v11 at 1280x720, DPM++ 2M Karras and hires fix set to 1.4. Unfortunately, we are unable to accept returns at this time.
All of them germinated and grew to the common orange-yellow version.
I gave up trying.