It would appear that artificial intelligence has won its latest battle -- this time, against desperate social media users.
Yes, with the rise of technology, home recording equipment, and subscription sites, more and more men are spending their hard-earned income on raunchy photos and videos from their favorite Instagram models or Twitch streamers.
Well, it would appear that "simping" has no limits, as reports have revealed that a group of unsuspecting Reddit users were tricked into buying nudes from a woman who doesn't even exist.
Yes, as reported by The Independent, a "woman" by the name of Claudia recently took to Reddit to share a eye-catching selfie, along with the caption: "Feeling pretty today."
Male Redditors being male Redditors quickly commented on the sultry snap, with one person writing "holy cr*p you are beautiful".
"You’re looking very pretty," another added, with a third commenting: "You are absolutely gorgeous!! Will make a great trophy wife someday."
And it wasn't long before Claudia started popping up on other Reddit forums - with interest in her growing more and more - to the point where she was actually able to sell some raunchy snaps for $100.
But there was just one problem... Claudia isn't real.
The Independent reports that the hyper-realistic Claudia was actually created using the artificial intelligence (AI) tool Stable Diffusion - a deep learning, text-to-image platform that is available to the public.
And according to the people behind the scam, Claudia was able to make some successful sales before being outed by other Redditors.
"For those who aren’t aware, I’m going to kill your fantasy," one very perceptive person wrote. "This is literally an AI creation, if you’ve ever worked with AI image models and making your own long enough, you can 10000 percent tell. Sorry to ruin the surprise I guess."
By this point, the gig was up, and more and more Redditors were asking to see photos of Claudia's hands - knowing that AI struggles to create realistic-looking human hands.
Nevertheless, the people behind the scam have since stated that it was simply a "test" to see just how much modern-day AI could fool Internet users.
"You could say this whole account is just a test to see if you can fool people with AI pictures,” Claudia's creators told Rolling Stone. "You could compare it to the vtubers, they create their own characters and play as an entirely different person.
"We honestly didn’t think it would get this much traction."
I don't know if this story has left me more terrified of how far AI has come or more sympathetic to the lonely social media users out there.
.jpg_n67ayG?tr=h-184)