With strands of wavy hair and brown eyes, a woman, appearing to be a Pacific Islander making a resin lamp, reads from her phone a rude comment on TikTok with sad music playing in the background of her video. “Oh, you’re a Polynesian woman that makes ocean lamps for kids. Stick to Moana. Time for a real job,” she read.
Her followers leave supportive comments defending her work and asking where to buy her products. But the woman isn’t real. The woman, appearing to be a Pacific Islander, was created by artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence has been used to prompt sham small businesses online, and the trend is raising concerns among artists in Hawai‘i.
Jeremy Carrasco is a national journalist who covers AI-generated media. He estimates there could be tens of thousands of accounts like this one: AI-generated videos created by scammers.
A full text version of this story will be available later today.
