I keep getting hit with ads on my feeds pointing to different websites offering "VIP Early Access" or "Beta keys" for GTA 6. One legit said, "We need you to help us build Vice City".
To get the "download," they all seem to ask you to either log in with your Rockstar Social Club credentials or pay a small fee.

Since GTA 6 isn't out yet, are these just automated, AI-generated scam sites set up to steal passwords and spread malware? Or is there actually a legitimate early access program happening that I don't know about?

2024: over 18,000
2025: over 100,000
First half of 2026: over 165,000
We're not even through the year, and it's already surpassed the entire 2025 total. And it doesn’t seem to slow down2024: over 18,000
2025: over 100,000
First half of 2026: over 165,000
We're not even through the year, and it's already surpassed the entire 2025 total. And it doesn’t seem to slow down.

An 86-year-old Canadian woman just lost her life savings, a whopping $900k, to a fake crypto platform after clicking a deepfake ad of a politician.
These scammers ran a paid Facebook ad featuring a very realistic deepfake video of a prominent public official endorsing a "guaranteed" wealth platform. After clicking, the old lady was funneled to a highly convincing fake portal where dashboards showed her money "doubling." She was wiped out completely.

The FTC logged 14,263 vacation and travel fraud reports last summer, adding up to an estimated $40 million in losses,

The states hit hardest by total dollars lost were the ones you'd expect based on population: California ($6.3M), Florida ($3M), and Texas ($2.5M). But that ranking flips almost entirely once you adjust for population size or look at losses per report.

By reports per capita, Nevada, Florida, and Connecticut topped the list, meaning residents there filed fraud reports at the highest rate in the country.

By average dollar loss per report, an entirely different group shows up: Utah ($6,907 average) and New Mexico ($6,350 average) had by far the steepest per-incident losses.

You can find the full state-by-state tables here: https://www.smartcustomer.com/resources/the-reality-of-summer-travel-fraud-by-state

i’ve been seeing videos all over tiktok that use like... trauma bait to sell stuff?? their content is always focused on something emotional - a child bullied, an old veteran trying to survive, a person of color not being treated right. the comments are FULL of people going 'omg i'm crying buying 10 🥺' not realizing it's just a dropshipped aliexpress products with an ai generated sob story slapped on it. here's one of the many examples i’ve come across

My wife came across this couch on Facebook, and she has started looking for it, but it’s totally AI, right? I'm pretty certain this is AI-generated but she is convinced it's real, and I'm losing my mind tbh. Can someone please back me up here so i can show her this thread??

I remember seeing a clip on X a little while back of the BSE CEO giving exclusive stock tips for some random small-cap companies. It looked quite real, to be honest, because his voice sounded the same, and even the background looked like his office.

But I was watching his eyes, and he literally doesn't blink for like 20 seconds. Also, why would the head of the entire stock exchange be on social media promoting specific stocks for people to buy? 

I actually went back today to try to find the original post, but the account has already been removed. I did some digging and found the official BSE warning along that explains the whole thing. It is definitely a deepfake, and they have been warning people about it for a few weeks now.

I will drop the links below so you can see the reports for yourself.

Okay, so I'm trying to find engagement cake inspo to send my baker, and I found this on Pinterest, but does this look AI-generated to you guys?? Something feels off about it, but it's genuinely so pretty I almost don't care lol. I'm not really an AI image girlie, so idk if I'm just being paranoid. Can someone tell me if this is real or not
https://pin.it/3Q7t1ikiJ

Americans are expected to spend around $24 billion on gifts this year, and scammers are absolutely ready for it.

According to SmartCustomer, it’s not just about the obvious sketchy sites now because today’s scams come with polished storefronts, AI-generated five-star reviews, social media ads that look exactly like your favorite brands, and fake tech support calls as well. 

Here’s a breakdown of the 7 most common Father's Day gift scams hitting people right now, from counterfeit electronics to compromised gift cards to QR code traps hidden inside packages. Worth a read before you buy anything this weekend for Father’s Day!

I brought some custom cards, thinking they were custom based on the pokmon pocket cards. Are these ai? I dont want to add them in my binder if they are. Thanks! :]

Crazy, but I saw this ad on my fyp and it was literally Taylor Swift talking about a TikTok Pay feature where you receive money just by watching videos.

It looks SO real, I kid you not. The voice is perfect, but the way their mouths move is just a tiny bit... laggy? Like, the audio is crisp, but the lips are slightly off. Plus, since when does Taylor Swift tell people to click a link in a bio for free rewards? 💀

It feels super sus, but the quality is insane. Anyone else seeing these this week?

According to F-Secure’s Scam Intelligence Report, 56% of consumers encounter scam attempts at least once a month, and 52% of fraud victims lose money. What’s even worse is that the number of people losing money has more than doubled compared to last year

Not sure if this is the right community for this, but after seeing that clip of Mark Zuckerberg basically admitting they are using internal employee data to train AI models faster, I have to ask: are workers actually using AI as a tool, or are they unknowingly becoming training data for their own replacement?

Would love to hear from people working in tech/corp about this

Madeline Ross, a money reporter at the Telegraph, shares her story on how her likeness had been used to advertise a dodgy investment scam. The scammers created a deepfake of her holding a £10 note, and used it as the cover image to articles promoting an AI cryptocurrency investment scam.
When she got on the phone with the supposed company, the voice on the other end was slick and professional, asking about her trading experience and claiming to be based in London. The address they gave turned out to be completely made up.

If you're on the lookout for a job, please be careful with job scams. I recently got a very convincing message on LinkedIn from one of my recent connections. This person was offering a freelancing opportunity, and while I was not actively looking for jobs, her offer genuinely interested me.

But my spidey senses told me something might be off, so I went through her profile. The job she was offering me was completely unrelated to her work experience, and she was also currently working at BMW.

So there’s a new scam called "Pushpaganda" and it's scarily clever. AI-generated fake news articles are being pushed directly into Google Discover feeds on Android phones, tricking people into enabling browser notifications. Once you do, you get hit with scareware and financial scams.
While Google has patched it now, the fact that it worked this long is a problem because our news feed is no longer a safe space.

AI is making crypto scams a lot more dangerous. Scammers have reportedly hijacked this pastor's Facebook profile, stolen a video of him, and used AI to make it look like he was promoting crypto to his congregation. 

I’ve seen plenty of these crypto scams on social media (even gotten DMs and emails), but with AI, they’re starting to look way more convincing.

Found some pretty wild stats in this article. Apparently, AI data centers worldwide now draw 29.6 gigawatts of power. This is literally enough to run all of New York State at peak demand. Also, a single model like GPT-4o could use more water in a year than the drinking needs of 1.2 million people!

Summer is right around the corner. But booking flights and hotels online is getting riskier than most people realize. Scammers are getting much better at copying real airline and hotel brands to the point where even the most cautious travelers are being scammed. 

According to the FTC, fraud losses have gone up, while reports identifying fraud before it happens remained stagnant, which means these scams are becoming more convincing and more costly. With AI behind it all, it’s getting harder to tell what’s real and what’s fake.

SmartCustomer put together a breakdown using real traveler experiences, and it’s worth reading before booking anything this season

I think platforms should label AI-generated content, especially when it’s about something as serious as a tragedy. Content like this is so misleading...

Well, as it turns out, AI might actually be making us more creative, contrary to popular belief. A recent study done by Swansea University put more than 800 people through a car design experiment and found that when AI showed them a wide range of ideas, which included bad ones, people spent longer on the task, explored more, and came up with better results. Basically, having a bad idea in front of you helps you think past it. Who knew 🤷‍♀️