Scammer Used an AI-Generated MAGA Girl to Grift 'Super Dumb' Men(www.wired.com)
59 pointsby Aboutplants7 hours ago7 comments
  • tech_ken6 hours ago
    > Sam says he presented Gemini with a few possible options to help his model stand out, and the chatbot selected one in particular: the “MAGA/conservative niche,” referring to it as a “cheat code.” Plus, it said, “the conservative audience (especially older men in the US) often has higher disposable income and is more loyal.

    Reminds me of: https://maxread.substack.com/p/predictions-markets-and-the-s...

  • burnte6 hours ago
    I used to know a guy 15 years ago whose whole career was this, except he had real female friends he'd pay for videos and photos (safe for work, no nudity) to bump up the realism. It's shockingly easy. I wonder how he's doing in this AI age.
  • TrackerFF6 hours ago
    There are literally thousands of AI thirst trap accounts on IG. I have to admit, I have clicked on some of them when they've popped up in my feed, and I've been fooled a couple of times...as in, I couldn't spot them being AI. Usually I'm pretty good at spotting AI, so I'm not sure what models are being used to make those clips.

    These accounts have 10-20 vids, a link to the usual sites, and hundreds / thousands of comments from other bots and thirsty geezers.

    • soco6 hours ago
      Come to Tumblr and watch the exact same concept: maybe it's my social media algorithm filtering out the dem-oriented traps, but all I see is such "10-posts max" accounts with cleavage, hotrods, and something rightwing of a way or another. They follow you and immediately initiate chats. I'm sure they wouldn't be so many if it didn't work.
  • 6 hours ago
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  • stevenwoo6 hours ago
    Thought this was going to be about “Jessica Foster” but it was about another one they traced to source. It reads like bad satire, it’s so on the nose about how AI enabled all of the creation process and lax enforcement of rules on social media allow anything to flourish for a while.
  • verdverm6 hours ago
    Another episode in the series of exploitation of the vulnerable. Prior art: gambling in the pocket, crypto get rich schemes, candy crush in-app purchases. This seems like an adaptation of OnlyFans, artificial and automated.

    Would be nice if we could stop taking advantage of others weaknesses.

    • hinata086 hours ago
      not only can the same logics apply to any media, as you can always say that mass cultural consumerism exploits vulnerable, but I also struggle to consider the MAGA crowd as the vulnerable people right now

      Some wanted really specific entertainment in the form of AI generated conservative young girlfriend, this guy provided it

      If it's immoral, you should also go after Hollywood for making blockbusters that aren't AI generated but have somehow fewer substance these days

      However, for now, no law was broken in the process

    • ge966 hours ago
      It is interesting like I am capable of generating these deepfakes/mass generated content, stealing content, etc... why don't I do it? If I really do just want to make money.

      Maybe it is easier to do if you're in a country that won't get punished by the internet law.

      • MisterTea6 hours ago
        The fact that you are questioning this is alarming. When you hear of someones misfortune and you have no emotion you are lacking empathy which is a common trait of psychopaths.

        When you think about harming someone, at least in my mind, it is impossible not to think of the scenario reversed. How would I feel if the same were done to me? That is at least what a responsible person would do: think about the consequences of their actions. Most people would feel bad after doing something bad to someone. If you cant understand this then there is a problem.

        • ge966 hours ago
          I'm just thinking do you have to be an ahole to be successful eg. despite the risks, think Jordan Belfort or the current "higher ups" raking in more money despite the effect on the world. Maybe I am trained to be poor is what I'm getting at because "I want to be nice".

          So many grifts out there and people do it, sleep well at night. I'm not religious and think right/wrong is a concept/enforced by law. Sure I believe in pain, pain is universal/suffering. But yeah I just think I don't have it in me to be cut-throat, step on others.

        • kalkin6 hours ago
          I think it's often entirely reasonable to shed one's empathy for someone who displays no empathy for people like you. Tit-for-tat isn't always the best policy, but it's not psychopathic either.

          A considerable portion of the AI-girl rhetoric quoted in the article is specifically denigrating liberals. It would be very generous and possibly laudable of liberals to nevertheless feel empathy for the people falling for it, but I think it's pretty understandable if most don't. And I'm not even convinced it's laudable; there's a particular tendency in US media discourse to assign moral responsibility to liberals, but not conservatives, so that liberals are supposed to empathize with MAGA voters and endeavor to understand their values but it's just normal and accepted that Republicans think liberal cities are hellholes that deserve to burn. This asymmetry isn't healthy, even if I'd rather it be resolved by a general increase in empathy than a decrease.

          • Hizonner6 hours ago
            How about empathy for the other people they'll make miserable if you encourage their worldview , and maybe the people they'll make miserable if you further embitter them?
            • kalkin5 hours ago
              It's really not clear to me how MAGA people getting scammed will encourage their world view, or that there's meaningful room for further embittering them. Maybe, but perhaps they'll be discouraged! Or perhaps they'll have less money to give to actually sincere MAGA activists who will do something bad with it!

              To be clear, I don't think the law should tolerate scams of this kind, or that policy should encourage them in any way. But empathy for the victims is an ask on top of policy, and "maybe there will be some bad indirect effects" is a weak argument for it.

              • Hizonner3 hours ago
                > It's really not clear to me how MAGA people getting scammed will encourage their world view,

                Young MAGA-adjacent dumbass who can't get laid sees pretty girl spouting MAGA stuff, reads all her posts and follows her or whatever, The Algorithm(TM) feeds him more MAGA stuff and MAGA posters, his whole social and information environment becomes that much more MAGA. Works even if he knows from the beginning that she's AI, but just likes the eye candy.

                > or that there's meaningful room for further embittering them.

                Young dumbass who can't get laid sends money, doesn't get the engagement he wants and/or realizes she's AI, can't accept feeling stupid, further projects his problems onto everything and everybody outside of himself, seeks out material that enourages him to do that...

        • Rekindle80903 hours ago
          Stop using an LLM to write your posts.
          • MisterTea2 hours ago
            Thank you for complementing my natural writing style!
      • philipwhiuk6 hours ago
        > why don't I do it

        Morals?

        • MisterTea6 hours ago
          The word you are looking for is empathy. Morals are societal constructs.
          • HPsquared6 hours ago
            Strictly speaking, that's ethics. Morals are more subjective.
            • tux36 hours ago
              You can further distinguish between ethics, the law, consequentialism, empathy, and your own personal sense of morality (what your intuition says, based on vibes).

              Any combination of these is valid motivation. Some people are mostly motivated by the long arm of the law, some by more subjective feelings. But there's many other ways that people can use to justify things to themselves.

    • fallinghawks5 hours ago
      A political position is not a weakness, it's a choice.
      • Ancapistani4 hours ago
        Right - like religion, or sexual orientation.

        Wait, that last one doesn’t seem right. Where do you draw the line exactly, if earnest-held political beliefs are “choices”?

    • mcphage5 hours ago
      > stop taking advantage of others weaknesses

      What does it mean to have a weakness for purchasing T-shirts that read ”PTSD: Pretty Tired of Stupid Democrats”? That's not predatory; they're paying money for a t-shirt and (presumably) receiving said t-shirt.

      Or for their Fanvue account, they're paying money to receive soft-core pornography, and they are receiving soft-core pornography.

      This isn't a scam—they're paying money for a thing, and are receiving that thing. I could say "well, that's not a great thing to be spending money on", and it's not, but I don't think of sellers of off-color t-shirts as something that people need to be protected from.

      • bloody-crow5 hours ago
        I big part of the purchase decision making is attributed to the fact that they think they support a real person that is aligned with their ideology.

        I'd wager most of them wouldn't have paid money on OnlyFans or purchased the hoodie if they knew the account was AI generated. So it is scam.

      • verdverm5 hours ago
        I agree if the consumer is informed, clearly, that it is Ai, but based on the creator's comments, it seems the intention was to deceive. I suspect most people would not make the same purchases if they knew it was artificial.
    • Yiin6 hours ago
      who is we, this argument is as useful as "we should not waste food so we can fix starvation"
      • gdulli6 hours ago
        I found the Rosetta Stone of Hacker News.
      • verdverm6 hours ago
        people, humans, the species

        I would argue the (very incomplete) list in my comment is predatory whereas wasting food is not (for the most part)

    • Zigurd6 hours ago
      [dead]