Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of superficially nice and pleasant Facebook pages that are stuffed with AI images that might seem to be photos of beautiful scenes and wildlife, but are actually bogus.
I’m far from the only person to notice such things. Facebook overrun with AI pictures and profiles is a Reddit thread on this issue. As I’ve just replied to a comment on Facebook [Fakebook?!]:
Not about just me of course; AI fakery like this an affront to huge numbers of creative people – also as without their work, none of this would exist, since AI is “trained” on real photos, text etc.
Plus such pages getting high rankings on FB; a lot driven by bot support.
And that many people are evidently hoodwinked. In time – very soon! – the differences will be even less.
Only tiny consolation in, for instance, Grok reporting Musk as a major purveyor of disinformation….
There are other articles covering the problem, including on the Morning Post website, which notes:
What do the pages gain from this? They used to post those clickbait links like “You’ll never believe Katy Perry said this!” But over the last few years, posts with articles linked in them (including news 😔) have been throttled by Facebook’s algorithm. So, scammers decided to innovate: Now the pages will post an image and then add links to ad-riddled clickfarms or sketchy dropshipping sites in the comments.
Facebook is full of AI-generated spam, and it’s probably its own fault
The issue has been studied, such as by researches with Stanford Internet Observatory, who alluded to nefarious purposes:
Spam Pages used clickbait tactics and attempted to direct users to off-platform content farms and low-quality domains. Scam Pages attempted to sell products that do not exist or to get users to divulge personal details; some were posting the AI-generated images on stolen Pages.
How Spammers, Scammers and Creators Leverage AI-Generated Images on Facebook for Audience Growth
Here are some screenshots from a few of the pages I’ve come across:
