AI is ruining the plant world

AI is infiltrating everything, even the most specific and least technological niches. Crochet fans They know it very well, but they are not the only ones, the community of plant enthusiasts is also living (many times, rather suffering) the effects of AI. Impossible plants, meaningless care advice and entire unions against it. Welcome to another new episode of AI ruining things.

Fake plant scams

We already talked about the hobby of collecting rare plants. The ones that tend to succeed the most are variegated plants, which means that their leaves have patterns with spots of different colors, and also hybrids between different varieties. In this context, AI arrives and, as it could not be otherwise, a whole wave of advertisements appear selling rare plants. Too rare.

In the cover image you can see some examples of this type of ads. Plants with butterfly-shaped leaves and fluorescent color, purple, blue or pink leaves, alocasias of monstrous size… The amount of AI-generated plant photo scams are overwhelming and we have found them all on Etsy, although there are also on other platforms such as Facebook Marketplace or eBay.

We already talked about how Etsy had been filled with AI-generated images posing as real illustrations. With plants we have confirmed what we already saw: Etsy is a market of AI scams without any type of control.

What you ask for vs what you get. Image: Etsy

Searching for “rare plant” numerous accounts appear that sell seeds and bulbs of plants that do not exist, all generated with AI and also in a very noticeable way, without any disguise. Since what they send are the seeds, if someone complains they can always use the excuse of “wait for it to grow”, but many users already realize that Those seeds do not correspond to the advertised plant.

Some positive comments from various accounts.

We have also found numerous positive comments on some of these stores, but they were as fake as plants. The first is because of the language and the use of emojis, very typical of texts generated with AI, but also because none of these accounts were normal users. One of them was another AI plant shop and the other three were newly created accounts, which only followed AI plant shops. Seeing this I immediately thought of the theory of the dead internet.

I have reported one of these stores to Etsy and it has caught my attention that they only allow it to be noted that the items are not handmade or that it is adult content not labeled as such, no scams or AI content. I will update the article if I receive a response.

To avoid being scammed with one of these impossible plants, it is best to look for information about that variety of plant specifically. There are plants with leaves that may look fake or painted, such as Begonia Ferox, Caladiums or some Calatheas. If it exists, you will find information online.

AI as a plant “doctor”

There is another aspect in which AI is very present in the world of plants and that is care. Many hobbyists turn to ChatGPT and other chatbots to ask what’s wrong with your plantshow much they should water them or if they should transplant them. In addition to the chatbots themselves, there are a lot of apps to take care of our plants which have built-in AI functions.

We have already seen that AI tends to be complacent and agree with usregardless of whether your answer is wrong and with the advice on plants it was not going to be different. Hallucinations also happen in the plant universe.

To no one’s surprise, many times the advice is anything but reliablefrom recommending home remedies that have no scientific basis (such as watering plants with milk), to explaining in detail how to propagate a plant from the tip of a leaf (spoiler, you can’t). To a user on Reddit recommended using thrips as a natural predator to control pests, the problem is that thrips are a pest.

The ‘PlantMom’ experiment. Image: Liam Kloppers

Another striking case was the experiment carried out by Liam Kloppers which he called ‘PlantMom’in which he set up an AI system based on Google’s Gemma 3 model and put it to take care of a chili plant. The system included light, temperature and soil humidity sensors, along with a grow light and water pump. The result was that the AI ​​misinterpreted the sensor data, turned off the grow light and watered when it was not needed, causing the plant to almost drown.

Another use of AI in this world has to do with plant identification. There are specific apps for this and we can also upload an image to a chatbot and have it do the identification. Of course, we must keep in mind that AI always prioritizes giving a response, so If you don’t know a plant you won’t admit itbut will identify it with another different species. At least in this the consequences do not necessarily imply the death of the plant.

Cover image | Etsy

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