Michigan Worker Allegedly Uses AI to Fake Car Crash to Escape Work: ‘The Stupidity of Someone Trying to Pass This Off as Real’

Can’t fool the internet

With AI so mainstream, everything seems suspicious, but one Michigan resident was definitely right in sussing out a house cleaner hired by their partner’s father. Going by Lightbright32_ on Reddit, OP shared a photo of a car crash on r/isthisAI, expressing how they believed it was artificially generated. They claim this was the second time the worker had canceled on the dad, but to go as far as to fake an accident was quite telling.

Fortunately, Redditors were quick to discover the truth of the house cleaner’s so-called car crash: it was indeed AI. Lightbright32_ ‘s suspicions were based on the group of vehicles behind the damaged Subaru, as well as how pristine the logo of the car was despite being smashed up. Over ten thousand users also gave the photo a good look, and several hundred were also confident the picture was fake.

The most telling piece of evidence was that the image has the SynthID watermark, as a top-upvoted comment pointed out. “This is 100% confirmation that the image is fake if anybody is wondering,” writes another Redditor. They added how Google’s SynthID is present even in AI-enhanced imagery. However, “OpenAI is not attached to any default camera app for any phone and any time the SynthID watermark for OpenAI is present that means it was definitely made by AI,” they concluded.

For anyone confused, Reddit user wildecats did their best to explain how the SynthID works, including a visual picture of what the “master overlay pattern” looks like after it’s been separated and amplified. Though plenty more commenters pointed out how there are so many other telling signs of AI, including floating trees, bizarre reflections, inconsistent vehicle damage, and more.

Redditors Believed The Michigan Worker Could Have Been a Scammer

Unfortunately, Lightbright32_ doesn’t share any details on how the confrontation between their partner’s dad and the house cleaning worker went down. Still, several Redditors expressed their mind over the poor character of the worker.

“The stupidity of someone to try and pass this off as real when the odds of a car sustaining a serious collision like this and remaining perfectly in lane is laughable to say the least,” remarked an individual. “They’re probably trying to get money out without doing the work,” added another.

Luckily, thanks to the investigation of internet sleuths, this particular Michigan worker hopefully wasn’t able to get away with any money she didn’t work for, not with her poorly AI-generated car crash photo, at least.