Instagram AI Influencers Are Defaming Celebrities with Sex Scandals
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Oh yeah, and one rewrote the 7-minute-workout app for me without the porn ads before and after the workout so I can enjoy working out with one of my kids.
Oh, it's a higher elevation, I need to change the recipe and lower the temperature. Oh, after it looked at the picture, the top is supposed to be crackly and shiny. Now I know what to look for. It's okay if it's a little soft while still in the oven because it'll firm up after taking them out? Great!
Another one, "Uh oh, I don't have Dutch-processed baking power. Can I still use the normal stuff for this recipe?" Yeah, Google can answer that, but so can an LLM.
To avoid my comment just being snarky, I agree that there's a difference between comparing Google to LLMs, and the library to Google... but still I hope you can acknowledge that LLMs can do a lot more than Google such as answering questions about recipe alterations or baking theory which a simple recipe website can't/won't.
I’m certainly no LLM enthusiast but pretending they are useless won’t make the issues with them go away
Maybe open source models will hold these accountable, or maybe they will degrade too somehow. Or maybe the world will be going through a hard collapse for any of us to care.
What is it, do you think, that has attracted so many misanthropes into tech over the last decade?
can't wait until he figures out AI
https://flowingdata.com/2025/10/08/mortality-in-the-news-vs-...
If they reported on heart disease people might get healthy. But it's instinctual understanding that people dying all over just improves journalists odds in our society. Keep them anxious with crime stats!
Such an unserious joke of a society.
Expecting tech bros to take responsibility for what they have unleashed is asking too much I suppose.
I've read statistics to the effect that bad news (fear or rage bait) often gets as much as 10,000X the engagement vs good news.
BUT, notice the absolutely opposite approach to AI and Web3 on HN. Things that highlight Web3 scams are upvoted and celebrated. But AI deepfakes and scams at scale are always downvoted, flagged and minimized with a version of the comment:
“This has always been the case. AI doesn’t do anything new. This is a nothingburger, move on.”
You can probably see multiple versions in this thread or the sibling post just next to it on HN front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46603535
It comes up so often as to be systematic. Both downvoting Web3 and upvoting AI. Almost like there is brigading, or even automation.
Why?
I kept saying for years that AI has far larger downsides than Web3, because in Web3 you can only lose what you volunarily put in, but AI can cause many, many, many people to lose their jobs, their reputations, etc. and even lives if weaponized. Web3 and blockchain can… enforce integrity?
It took a few years for that to happen.
Plenty of folks here were all-in on NFTs.
What you're noticing is a form of selection bias:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
We can't rebuild the economy without also rebuilding the State, and that requires careful nuanced engineering and then the consent of the governed.
I mean you are clearly equivocating AI with unemployment and scams, which I think is a very incomplete picture. What do you think should be done in light of that?
What else, let me guess, slop in software, ai psychosis, environmental concerns, growing wealth inequality. And yes may be we can write some crappy software faster. That should cover it.
I have no suggestions to on how to solve it. Only way is to watch openAI/Claude lose more money and then hopefully models are cheaper or completely useless.
Are you a developer? If so does this mean you have not been able to employ AI to increase the speed nor quality of your owrk?
Blaming the technology for bad human behavior seems an error and it's not clear that the GP made it.
People could and likely will also increase economic activity, flexibility, and evolve how we participate in the world. The alternative would get pretty ugly pretty quick. My pitchfork is sharp and the powers that be prefer it continues being used on straw.
But for weapons death is the result of their purpose.
you suggested it:
> government should ban the development of AI?
works for me!
We are now talking about AI in how it enables porn, spam, and scams....
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2024/05/31/google-ai-...
But I do agree. It is more socially acceptable to just lie, as long as you're trying to make money or win an argument or something. It's out of hand.
The impression can be a bias of growing up. Adults will generally teach and insist that children tell the truth. As one grows, it is less constrained and can say many "white lies" (low impact lies).
We do have more impact for some people (known people, influences, etc.) than before because of network effects.
The question of how dishonesty spreads through social networks is relevant to relationships, organizations, and society at large. Individuals may not consider that their own minor lies contribute to a broader culture of dishonesty. [0]
the effect of which would be massively amplified if you take into account that
Research has found that most people lie, on average, about once or twice per day [1]
where the most prolific liars manage upward of 200; you can then imagine that with the rise and prevalence of social media the acceptance/tolerance has also socially transmitted
So, while dishonesty can spread through social networks, does not address if the total dishonesty is larger or lower or equal to, for example 100 years ago, because there are many factors involved.
Not only is the cat out of the bag but this is just the beginning. For example say porn vids where people can change the actress to their favorites celebrity in real-time is imminent.
There's no fighting this.
I predict that it within three years we'll be discussing a story about how a celebrity hired a company to produce pictures of them doing intimate things with people to head off the imminent release sexual assault allegations.
Edit: On the other hand, here we are looking at it and talking about it. Some number of us followed links in that article. Some number of them followed those to an OnlyFans page.
There are ads here all the time. They're just text-based, instead of picture/video-based. "Show HN" is literally only for advertising.
First of all, I'm not sure it makes sense to refer to these AI-generated characters as AI 'influencers'. Did these characters actually have followers prior to these fake videos being generated in December 2025? Do they even have followers now? I don't know, maybe they did or do, but I get the impression that they are just representing influencer-ish characteristics as part of the scheme. Don't get me wrong, the last thing I want is to gatekeep such an asinine term as 'influencer'. However, just like I would not be an influencer just by posting a video acting like one, neither do AI characters get a free pass at becoming one.
Second, there's the way the article is subjectifying the AI-generated characters. I can forgive the headline for impact, but by consistently using 'AI influencers' throughout the article as the subject of these actions, it is not only contributing to the general confusion as to what characters in AI-generated videos actually are, but also subtly removing the very real human beings who are behind this from the equation. See for instance these two sentences from the article, UPPERCASE mine:
1- 'One AI influencer even SHARED an image of HER in bed with Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro'
2- 'Sometimes, these AI influencers STEAL directly from real adult content creators by faceswapping THEMSELVES into their existing videos.'
No, there is no her sharing an image of herself in bed with anyone. No, there are no them stealing and faceswapping themselves onto videos of real people. The 'AI influencers' are not real. They are pure fictions, as fictional as the fictinal Nicolás Maduro, Mike Tyson and Dwayne Johnson representations that appear in the videos. The sharing and the faceswapping is being done by real dishonest individuals and organisations out there in the real world.