In recent years there has seemed to be a steady rise in the number of scams that people are seeing. While in the past online scams were often restricted to email or the occasional scam call, the global expansion of social media as well as advancements in AI have allowed for scammers to invent new ways to scam people. One scam that I myself have heard of, is people using AI generated images in order to sell products on social media sites, like TikTok. The specific scam that I saw was people using AI generated images or videos, in order to sell “Crystal Cups”. The videos showed extremely detailed and well crafted cups made out of crystal, and were designed with the intentions of making the viewer believe that it was the product they would be receiving. However in reality, once people’s cups arrived they quickly learned that the product they received looked nothing like the video. Rather than the cups being made from crystals, they were simply plastic cups that were painted. The sole intention of this scam was to trick the consumer into believing they were buying a different product, rather than the product that they were actually receiving. This was done for the purpose of the seller to receive monetary gain, at the expense of the consumer. As AI technology becomes more advanced, it is becoming more difficult to determine if something is real or fake, and it will only get harder. For this reason it has become much more commonplace to see AI technology like AI generated imagery being used in online scams. With there being so much development in AI technology at the moment, it is highly likely that scams utilizing AI will become more prevalent in the future.
Thus it is becoming ever more important that people know how to determine if something is or is not a scam. There are actually many different methods that one can use to determine if something is a scam or not. While in this post I will only be focusing on methods to determine if something is a scam for a situation similar to the one above, there are many different methods besides these that can help for other situations. But, how does one do that? How can you tell if something is a scam? For a scam like the one above, where it is a product being sold using AI videos or images the following would help you to figure out if it is a scam:
Common Sense
The most tried and true way of determining if something is a scam is by using your common sense. If you see an advertisement for a product and are not sure if it is a scam, ask yourself: “Is it too good to be true?” If something seems like it can’t be real, then it most likely isn’t. If the product is absolutely amazing and you can’t believe you found it being sold on a social media site, or the price seems way too low for such a product and you can’t pass it up, then the chances are that you’re looking at a scam. In the scam I mentioned earlier, the product was amazing – after all who wouldn’t want a cup made purely from crystals? But when you think about it, the product was being sold on a Social Media site, when such a good would typically be sold in a luxury goods store. Furthermore for so many people to be willing to and able to buy such a product, it would have had to have been sold at a rather mundane price, but goods that are made of or use crystals are typically rather expensive. The promise that was being made through the ads and the pricing of it were just too good to be true. This oftentimes is what scammers attempt to do, they seek to make an incredible promise (in this case the crystal cups) and offer it at such an amazing deal (the price of the cups), that people will react (buy the cups) before fully thinking it through. The aim of this is to get you to react and fall for the scam before you can think of anything else, cause after all who would be willing to give up such an amazing deal? So if you are ever scrolling on social media, and you happen to see an ad for a product that seems absolutely amazing and when you click on it, the price seems to be way too low for it, make sure to stop for a second and ask yourself “Is it too good to be true?” Cause in most cases the answer is yes, and you just might save yourself from falling for a scam.
Check The Image
As AI technology has become more easily accessible to people, it has started to be used much more frequently in online scams. This has created an even greater need for people to be able to tell if something is AI generated or not. While it is already very difficult to determine if an image or video is AI generated, as the technology becomes more advanced it will only become more difficult. In order to better understand how AI images look and how to discern them it is best to start now, rather than later. That being said, there are some key things that are seen in all AI generated images that should be looked for. Firstly you should look to see if anything about the image or video simply seems off, by this I mean does the image have small details that kind of bleed together or are not defined. An example of this is that many AI generated images of people will have mistakes at the hands with there either being multiple hands or no hands at all, while faces might have small detail like eyes that instead of being defined, will kind of be bleeding into the other features present on the face. This is a key detail of an image that can help you determine if it is real or AI generated. Secondly, is something occurring in the image or video possible. Firstly you should make sure to look closely at an image, and see if there is anything wrong with the image or video. This could be something floating in the air without being held by anything, a person having multiple hands, or a cup being filled through the bottom, as well as much more. Really one should just keep their eye out for any aspects of a video or image that are not physically possible. A lot of AI generated media will have impossible events or situations being presented within them. Some videos I have seen that would fall into this category are videos of empty cups that get filled by the bottom of the cup being placed in a liquid and suddenly the cup is filled, as well as images of supernatural creatures being presented as real images. If the image or video you are seeing has something that is physically impossible occurring within it, this is a big give away that it is not real. Lastly, does the video look overly smooth or plasticy? Many AI generated media has an overly smooth and shiny look to it that gives it an appearance similar to plastic. This is the most common give away that I have seen for AI generated images, as I have personally never come across one that does not have this look to it. This AI generated look is what was visible in the videos of the crystal cups, rather than the cups looking like actual crystals they were overly smooth and shiny in texture. Additionally the backgrounds of the videos had the same problems, in that they looked like they had been smoothed out or polished, even if the material of say the table shouldn’t have been. A product being promoted through the use of AI videos or images is not an immediate sign that you are dealing with the scam, but it also should not be written off as being normal. If something is being promoted through the use of AI images, rather than images of the actual product then one needs to wonder why. In the case of the crystal cups it was because the cups did not actually look like crystals and many people probably wouldn’t have bought them if they had seen how the cups actually looked. The seller used the AI videos to mislead people in order to sell the cups, and this could be what is happening if you see something else being sold with AI generated advertisements and it could be to either a lesser or greater degree than the cups.
Do Research
While social media is facilitating the spread of scams at a much quicker rate than was possible before, it is also allowing people to spread awareness about scams much faster than before. When a scam starts going around a social media site and many people fall for it, they oftentimes will then post videos about said scam. This just so happened for the scam that I am talking about above, if you were to look up “Crystal Cups” on TikTok you would be shown dozens of videos of people discussing the scam. This is a really good tool for people to use when trying to determine if something is a scam or not. When it comes to scams, always make sure to do research. If the scam is being presented to you on social media like the “Crystal Cups” scam, then there are multiple ways that you can go about researching it. One such way is by looking at the comment section on a video if it is available, this will allow you to get an idea of what people are saying about the product. However don’t just leave it at that as oftentimes creators have the ability to delete, hide, or block certain comments from being posted, or entire comment sections all together. The most reliable way to do research would be to look up the specific item on the social media site or on the web to see if it is being discussed. As I said above this can be done for the “Crystal Cups” scam, and it allows a potential victim of the scam to see what is actually being done. While looking up a scam on a social media site is very useful if it has been around for a while, it is not as good of a tool for a brand new scam introduced to a social media site. For this reason the best place to do research for scams is the internet, as it will allow you to see anything that has been discussed on other sites, not just the social media site in which you saw the scam. This will allow for people to see if something is a scam even if it has only just been brought to a particular social media site. As the internet will also bring up the videos or comments made about the scam on other websites. This method is one of the most fool proof ways of determining if something is a scam, as it provides you with first person accounts of the product or company. So the next time you see a cool ad for something on the internet, do not forget to research it and make sure it is legit before buying it.
While it has always been quite difficult to determine if something is a scam, it has never been impossible. By utilizing the 3 methods I mentioned above you will become a better scam detector. However you should not simply stop at just these three methods, there are numerous other methods out there for detecting scams. So while it might take a bit of extra time out of your day to practice these methods, you should as you never know when you’ll come face to face with a scam. So just remember the next time you see a video for an amazing product or see a deal that’s just too good to pass up, “is it too good to be true?”
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