The Facebook news feed is currently full of surprising photos, highlighted by the social network. But don’t be fooled: they are completely fake and have the sole purpose of scamming you.
In recent weeks, you may have seen some funny photos on Facebook. A Jesus made entirely of shrimp – yes, you read correctly –, another coming out of a private jet with two top models, yet another made from plastic bottles… All accompanied by sentences like “No one likes my artwork” Or “I made it with my own hands”. These strange publications can reach 500,000 views, and garner hundreds of comments and thousands of likes.
On the “Native American History” page, there is similar content, with photos of grandmothers celebrating their birthdays, with messages like “Today is my birthday, I know I’m very sick but no one has ever blessed me!” or “Hello everyone, I’m 114 years old, I made my own birthday cake with peach cream and topping, I started decorating cakes from the age of 5, I love and I can’t wait to continue my pastry journey“. Here again, user engagement is there. But upon closer inspection, we quickly noticed some problematic details, such as frozen facial expressions, spelling mistakes or poorly modeled hands. And we quickly realize that all these images are false and have actually been generated by AI!
This is simply what we call clickbait (click traps), distributed on spammers’ pages – some publish more than fifty per day! –, which have benefited Facebook for decades. They are particularly targeting the oldest segment of social network users – not to mention boomers – who are less aware of new technologies and the dangers of the Internet. Because, by reading the numerous comments, we realize that Internet users take the thing at face value!
However, there are several problems with these images. First, it is nowhere indicated that they are generated by AI, either by their creator or by the platform. Worse, it’s Facebook which, through the magic of its algorithms, highlights this kind of content and makes them gain visibility! However, some of these pages are run by malicious people who seek to attract an uninformed public to external sites, generally to false media filled with advertisements, dropshipping sales sites or corrupted pages intended to steal their personal data. . So if you come across photos like this, ignore them, or better, report them!