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As families desperately seek to find missing loved ones and communities grapple with immeasurable losses of both life and property in the wake of Hurricane Helene, AI slop scammers appear to be capitalizing on the moment for personal gain.
A Facebook account called "Coastal Views" usually shares calmer AI imagery of nature-filled beachside scenes.
The account's banner image showcases a signpost reading "OBX Live," OBX being shorthand for North Carolina's Outer Banks islands.
But starting this weekend, the account shifted its approach dramatically, as first flagged by a social media user on X.
Instead of posting "photos" of leaping dolphins and sandy beaches, the account suddenly started publishing images of flooded mountain neighborhoods, submerged houses, and dogs sitting on top of roofs.
But instead of spreading vital information to those affected by the natural disaster, or at the very least sharing real photos of the destruction, the account is seemingly trying to use AI to cash in on all the attention the hurricane has been getting.
The account links to an Etsy page for a business called" OuterBanks2023," where somebody who goes by "Alexandr" sells AI-generated prints of horses touching snouts with sea turtles, Santa running down the shoreline with a reindeer, and sunsets over ocean waves.
The latest natural disaster images are designed to look realistic, but collectively bear signs of AI generation.
One of the men allegedly rescuing a forgotten pup has what looks to be six fingers on an AI-mangled hand, for instance.
"Great job," Coastal Views captioned the garbled picture, along with three folded hands emojis.
We also ran reverse image searches for the images, but couldn't locate an origin outside of Coastal View's account.
The appalling posts highlight a worrying trend. If you've scrolled through Facebook anytime in the last year or so, you may have stumbled across AI slop, or low-quality, AI-generated junk content.
AI slop is a problem in a few different areas of the web, but on Facebook, it usually takes the form of dubious AI-spun imagery of subjects like veterans and cops, any iteration of Jesus Christ you can possibly think of, starving kids — and, among other subjects, natural disasters.
As a 404 Media investigation into the growing slop phenomenon found earlier this year, most of this stuff is expressly designed to infiltrate Facebook's algorithm to garner engagement and advertising revenue.
It's a slimy business that's making the internet worse for everyone. And now, in a disturbing turn, AI slop posters are going after natural disasters as well.
Coastal Views' posts don't get a huge amount of views, so it's unclear how much revenue the account is making, if any. Instead, getting Facebook users to the account's associated Etsy page appears to be the top priority.
It's also not flagging the posts as AI-generated and is instead presenting them as if they're real images of a disaster zone.
In other words, it's hard to look at these fake pictures of destruction in Asheville as anything other than yet another ploy to get people to buy AI-generated pictures of Santa in the Outer Banks.
And if that's indeed the case, it would be an insidious use of AI to clog up information pathways in the aftermath of a deadly natural disaster.
We reached out to Coastal Views with questions, but haven't heard back.
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