An elderly couple in Malaysia traveled hundreds of miles to ride a tourist attraction they saw a video of on social media, only to discover that the attraction did not actually exist and the video had been AI-generated.
The couple made the journey from Kuala Lumpur to Perak, traveling over 300 km to ride a cable car tourist attraction they had learned about through a viral video on social media.
When they arrived, they asked a hotel worker for directions to the attraction, upon which they were informed that the ride did not exist, reported the Straits Times.
“(The couple) came to check into the hotel, and they asked if I had ridden the cable car at Kuak Hulu. I thought they were just kidding,” said the worker.
The hotel worker took to social media platform Threads to detail the incident after she realized that the couple had been entirely serious.
“I was so shocked… I explained to the auntie that the video was made by artificial intelligence and not real,” said the hotel worker.
The video, which is nearly three minutes long, depicts a cable car ride and a reporter with a microphone talking about the attraction while interviewing people in the area regarding the ride.
“The auntie then asked, ‘Why would anyone want to lie? There was even a reporter (in the video),'” she added.
The worker explained to the woman that the journalist in the footage was not a real person, and had also been AI generated and that no such cable car attraction exists in the area.
“We advise the public not to fall for viral content without confirmation. In this era of AI-generated media, misleading materials can spread easily and cause confusion,” Baling police chief Ahmad Salimi Md Ali told the outlet.
Originally published on Latin Times
