AI fakes to warn friends and family about, from fake pets to fake damage photos
A TechRadar reporter rounds up the AI-generated fakes and scams he has seen over more than a year in Reddit's r/isthisAI community, where users ask others to judge whether photos, videos and messages are real. The categories include faked rental-property damage used to demand money from renters, fake notices and announcements, AI images attached to real news events, romance scams, puppy-sale scams, politically motivated misinformation images, and fabricated documents such as receipts, medical photos and plane tickets. The author says he tested whether ChatGPT would help him create fake certificates, fossils and receipts and that in most cases it did not stop him; the piece advises reverse image searching, checking original sources, being wary of emotionally charged content, and notes Google has widened access to its SynthID Detector, which does not catch all AI content.
As AI content becomes harder to spot by eye, ordinary users' best defense shifts from hunting for visual flaws to asking what someone wants them to believe or do.