"I don't want to admit it, but I did spend a lot of money online this holiday shopping season. And unsurprisingly, some of those purchases didn't meet my expectations. A photobook I bought was damaged in transit, so I snapped a few pictures, emailed them to the merchant, and got a refund. Online shopping platforms have long depended on photos submitted by customers to confirm that refund requests are legitimate."
"On the Chinese social media app RedNote, WIRED found at least a dozen posts from ecommerce sellers and customer service representatives complaining about allegedly AI-generated refund claims they've received. In one case, a customer complained that the bed sheet they purchased was torn to pieces, but the Chinese characters on the shipping label looked like gibberish. In another, the buyer sent a picture of a coffee mug with cracks that looked like paper tears."
"In November, a merchant who sells live crabs on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, received a photo from a customer that made it look like most of the crabs she bought arrived already dead, while two others had escaped. The buyer even sent videos showing the dead crabs being poked by a human finger. But something was off. "My family has farmed crabs for over 30 years. We've never seen a dead crab whose legs are pointing up,""
Many online purchases arrive damaged or fail to meet buyer expectations during the holiday shopping season. Platforms rely on customer-submitted photos to validate refund requests. Generative AI is producing fabricated damage images that merchants use to obtain fraudulent refunds and undermine photo-based verification. Sellers on Chinese social apps report allegedly AI-generated refund claims including bed sheets torn with gibberish shipping labels, coffee mugs cracked like layered paper, and videos of supposedly dead live crabs. Merchants say fresh groceries, low-cost beauty products, and fragile items are abused most, and that refunds often get issued without requiring returns. Experienced sellers sometimes detect anomalies that reveal scams.
Read at WIRED
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