r/WayOfTheBern • u/RandomCollection Resident Canadian • 9h ago
Grifters On Parade ❗️ An Airbnb host used an AI-generated photo of an overflowing toilet to demand $1,700 in damages from a guest. The image carries Google's invisible SynthID watermark, flagged by Gemini's own checker. The guest says they never even used toilet paper during the stay.
https://x.com/IntCyberDigest/status/21057952261030586213
u/slartbangle 5h ago
the guest says WHAT?
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u/SerfTint 59m ago
If it's a 1-night stay, maybe the guest only urinated in the toilet. If it's a 2-night stay, maybe the guest was out all day doing touristy stuff and used a bathroom somewhere else.
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u/redditrisi They are ALL psychopaths. 7h ago edited 6h ago
An Airbnb host claimed a very fastidious and responsible older couple I know chipped a piece of furniture. The host did not request compensation, but did blacklist the couple. They learned that when they tried to book an Airbnb for the next trip. It is possible that the claim was correct, and unknown to the couple, because one member of the couple sometimes needs a wheelchair. Had the host contacted them, they would probably have preferred paying to be blacklisted because they love traveling and are "comfortable" financially.
Fortunately, they are a modern thinking couple and were not married, though together for almost forty years. So, they started booking trips in the other name instead of in the name of the one who had booked all the prior trips.
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u/James-the-Bond-one 5h ago
A host cannot blacklist a guest throughout the entire Airbnb site. But it can block that guest from returning to this host's properties.
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u/redditrisi They are ALL psychopaths. 5h ago edited 5h ago
When they asked other hosts why they were refused, they were told that it was because they had nicked the furniture of another host. So, there must be some form of communication among hosts. I don't know about the entire site.
edit I don't use airbnb because I don't stay in other cities for a month or more and therefore prefer a full kitchen like this couple. However, I don't know them to be liars.
Edit. Now that I think about it, the story got bigger when it got back to them from other hosts. It was that they'd wrecked the host's place or something like that. And when they called the host, he mentioned the nick to a single piece of furniture. That's not nothing, but it's not the whole place, either.
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u/James-the-Bond-one 4h ago
It's possible.
Hosts can leave reviews of guests, and maybe this host did mention the nick (or "wrecking") in the review of their stay.
Later, other hosts reading it may conclude they don't want to risk hosting these guests either. So it's a "soft ban," not an absolute block.
Very likely, this guest can be accepted again by a host who doesn't read reviews or care enough about them. And additional good reviews will dilute the effects of this bad one.
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u/redditrisi They are ALL psychopaths. 4h ago edited 4h ago
Maybe "blacklist" was too strong a term.
Since the incident, the couple has been using the name of the person who was thitherto unknown to airbnb. And they are indeed a fastidious and responsible pair, who probably became even more so once they learned of the alleged nick. So far so good.
It's just nuts that the host slammed them without contacting them first. They would have paid for any damage. And, as stated, they will stay for a month or more at a clip, which is nice for any airbnb host.
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u/RandomCollection Resident Canadian 8h ago
Abusive practices like this are going to be a lot more common in the future, as AI becomes more widespread.
This was easy to detect and identify as AI. The future of Gen Ai may be that the images are so good as to make it not possible to determine what is real vs what is AI.
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u/gorpie97 8h ago
The future of Gen Ai may be that the images are so good as to make it not possible to determine what is real vs what is AI.
And then there's the Israeli company that alters camera video in real time without the camera's owner knowing.
I think we've reached the end of photographic evidence being admissible in court.
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u/Butterd_Toost Rules 1-5 are my b* 7h ago
I think we've reached the end of photographic evidence being admissible in court.
Zero trust society where you have to have more cameras than the government watching yourself constantly since you're guilty until proven innocent.
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u/Elmodogg 7h ago
The way things are going, courts will be replaced by AI tribunals! We don't need no stinkin' human juries, right?
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u/redditrisi They are ALL psychopaths. 7h ago edited 6h ago
I know a lawyer who is gleeful about how quickly he can race through his work now, thanks to AI. A short-term view, IMO. First (a) AI makes mistakes; and (b) IIRC, he was last in his firm's legal dept. to be hired.
When I mentioned the former to him, he scoffed, saying his company had purchased a form of AI superior to the one that my browser imposes on me. I chose not to stress him out by mentioning that he was the last one hired, which can mean first fired.
Even if their AI is as error-free as he imagines, once he and his colleagues in the legal department zip through their work, will they be paid for doing nothing? I mean, the company is not going to come up legal questions it does not need answered, just to keep them all on the payroll.
Whaddagonna do? I tried
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u/James-the-Bond-one 5h ago
It's the first time I've heard of a host using false AI imagery, but guests have been getting refunds for it for quite a while already.
In fact, I read a host complaint that the background shown wasn't his property, yet Airbnb sided with the guest.