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Scammers Sell Seeds for Exotic AI-Generated Flowers That Don’t Exist
(www.404media.co)
Ah! An AI use case.
Who knew AI would be useful for running scams......
Are you saying that the thing that is only good at lying and creating fake images/videos is good at scamming ? I am shocked !
LLMs are truthiness generators.
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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
Does cat face orchid bonsai sound like a scam to you?!?
Well I will make an exception for them as they look very polite
It sounds like a fever nightmare.
They catch moths
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I think it depends who you target. For example "Freedom water" is great because it's just targeting MAGA dumbasses.
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I'm selling this sunflower seed. !!! Only 50 sun !!!
Those flowers are sending off some form of primitive flight or fight response in my brain. Their appearance is unnatural and unsettling.
To be fair some real flowers look very weird, but those fake ones look like muppets.
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If someone needs to use generative AI to market a product, then that product doesn't exist.
I don't think the product actually existing is something scammers are typically concerned about
But it's a good rule of thumb for consumers. or at least for us to tell our parents.
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Back in my day you got ripped off buying seeds from scammers good at Photoshop.
"Good"
A slightly different shade of a flower is not THAT unreasonable.
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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.
Yet another reason to plant seeds of species that are native to your region, and purchase them from reputable sources
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
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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.
Even before AI, this was a scam. Photoshopped pics. Fake seeds for legit plants, like wasabi, that are harder to find. And so on.
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.
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.
When your mother starts buying this shit and spending big $$$ on stupid scams, you'll want them stopped.
Are you saying his mother is stupid?
She must be, based on some of the things I got her to do.
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Yeah, caveat emptor has always worked so well in the past. Let's not regulate anything.
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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?
Agreed, selfish liars are always on the worse side of the moral scale, no exceptions.
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.
"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.
They look like boobs
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.
Dr Seuss ahh flowers
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this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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