There appears to be an emerging scam involving AI-generated images of exotic or rare plants being sold online as real, living specimens. These fraudulent listings prey on plant enthusiasts, promising unique plants that don’t actually exist. Below is a link to an interesting article (including photos of some of these beautiful, but not real, plants), if you’d like to learn more.
If you do run across someone trying to sell something on Facebook that is clearly not real, here are two things that you can do:
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Do a search on the plant name and the business that is supposedly selling them before commenting and/or making a purchase.
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Block that social media account. On Facebook, click on the 3 little dots at the top right of the post (to the left of the “X”) and choose “I don’t want to see this.” You can also choose to block the account.