By Zeyi Yang
Publication Date: 2025-12-19 19:31:00
I don’t want to admit it, but I spent a lot of money online this holiday shopping season. And not surprisingly, some of these purchases didn’t meet my expectations. A photo book I purchased was damaged in transit, so I took a few photos, emailed them to the retailer, and received a refund. Online shopping platforms have long relied on customer-submitted photos to confirm that refund requests are legitimate. But generative AI is now starting to break this system.
A touch too suspicious
On the Chinese social media app RedNote, WIRED found at least a dozen posts from e-commerce sellers and customer service representatives complaining about supposedly AI-generated refund claims they had received. In one case, a customer complained that the bed sheet he purchased was torn to pieces, but the Chinese characters on the shipping label looked like gibberish. In another case, the buyer sent a picture of a coffee cup with cracks that looked like paper tears. “This is a ceramic mug, not a…
