A.I. catfishing

[guru68]

How much of a problem have A.I. bots posing as providers become? At some point it is just catfishing, yes, but I'd seen some discussion and was curious. Are people encountering this very much?

[jony]

I haven't run into AI bots much with messaging, but I have had trouble with AI photos. I understand it's natural for providers to touch up their photos, but when folks use a filter from an app, it's hard to determine whether they've done light editing, heavily distorted their features, or sometimes generated a person from scratch. AI detectors flag all of these as "likely AI use".

A couple years ago I'd look for tattoos - it's hard to consistently apply heavy filters without messing that up, or generate a person with the same tattoo across multiple photos, and easy to verify in person. But even those are straightforward to replicate with enough effort now.

 

[nomad]

New tools are allowing people to edit their photos without needing to know Photoshop anymore.  Seeing more full AI profiles on IG as the tools become easier to use.  A few instances, it's is putting AI profiles based on real profiles you follow.  They focus on the AI persona and leave the background the same.  Some are very good.  IG seems to be uneven in flagging AI content.  Ultimately if the person that shows up for the meet isn't who you thought, you are under no obligation to meet them much less pay them.  

[Nue2thegame]

On 5/18/2026 at 1:30 AM, jony said:

A couple years ago I'd look for tattoos - it's hard to consistently apply heavy filters without messing that up, or generate a person with the same tattoo across multiple photos, and easy to verify in person. But even those are straightforward to replicate with enough effort now.

 

Haven’t been a big fan of tattoos up until now but you’ve just taught me a reason to appreciate them. 

Edited May 29 by Nue2thegame