Summary: First, criminals preying upon someone apparently vulnerable (after cancer, divorce, and who knows what else). Then, as if that wasn't more than enough for one person, a bunch of Internet people, and even some brand marketers, publicly mocking and harassing the victim.
Lol this article doesn't even include the best part which were the pictures the scammer was sending. It's like 10 low res photos of Brad Pitt in a hospital bed, I think some of them lifted from movies. I don't even think AI really played an important role here.<p>Edit: Here <a href="https://x.com/PopBase/status/1879197931129163782" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/PopBase/status/1879197931129163782</a>
The lack of empathy of the responses here saddens me. I sincerely hope none of your parents or grandparents are scammed. And I hope you are all educating your loved ones on the threat of scams in this new era when AI fakes are so easy and realistic.
<i>"I understand the comic effect but we're talking about a woman in her 50s who got conned by deepfakes and AI which your parents and grandparents would be incapable to spot," one popular post on X read.</i><p>This ignores the fact that her daughter tried to explain it to her <i>for over a year</i>.<p>To me it seriously raises a question, what should we do with or think about people who deemed capable and are 50+ “YoE” but still unable to real life or a little bit of logic, basically.
Consider that if someone secretly had our modern AI tech 10-15 years ago, they could have easily scammed a lot of people out of money in romance scams.<p>Now consider that the future isn’t equally distributed and some people are literally still living at the level of 10-15 years ago. Wow, there is a lot of opportunity for scammers out there, though the window will be closing every year as the world catches up, and no one will trust images, videos and voices anymore.
The article is getting clicks because of "AI" in the title but this is a very generic scam. There's no part of it that wasn't done before AI a million times.
Why would anyone give a celeb money? Especially a high profile one like Brad Pitt.<p>Like I get if you believed that Josh Hartnett or Pauly Shore is asking you for money. They haven't worked much in the last decade.<p>But Brad Pitt? That's almost as bad as Ryan Reynolds or Kevin Hart asking you for money cause they're in so many movies.
I was <i>so proud</i> of my 63 year old mother the day she told me about a slightly similar scam (involving "borrowed" Antonio Banderas photos) that she not only <i>did not</i> fall for, but actually somehow managed to trace the scammer down (through some Google reverse image searching and other Internet "sleuthery" that I would <i>not</i> have imagined her doing on her own). Not only <i>that</i> but she then proceeded to send her conclusions (that it was some French scammer scum and his wife perpetrating all this, <i>and</i> she had <i>proof</i> of who it was) to her little circle of online "friends" that were actually <i>in the act</i> of falling for the scam and sending gifts, money, and whatnot to this dirtbag French scammer couple. Why, I'll never know... Who sends money and gifts to online strangers pretending to be celebrities? Hell, who sends gifts to random celebrities for that matter? Worst part of this story is that most of the "old biddies" actually <i>ridiculed</i> my mother and called her "paranoid" and proceeded to happily get scammed, thinking they were actually conversing online with Antonio himself... Some people are just bound and determined to <i>stay</i> stupid, I guess. Sadly, "A.I." audio/image/video generation has not made this situation any better these days.
A lot of the comments here are really mean to that woman, for talking to Brad Pitt. Ha ha ha.<p>At least he exists in real life, not like some entity they themselves may be talking to on Friday, Saturday or Sunday (or another day where communication with deities is the clearest).
Unbelievable history. We are not talking about an old lady, 95 yo. She is 53, wealthy. While money does not make you intelligent, probably gives access to more or less good information, social relations. I literally think this history is not believable.<p>Also that she happens to be the 2 worse diseases in popular knowledge.<p>I don’t know… seems contrived.