These AI-Generated Cadillac Photos Posted To Bring A Trailer Are A Sign Of Bad Things To Come
When you buy a car online, you’d expect what you see to be more or less what you get. Sure, some minor cosmetic defects might be too small for the camera to pick up, but you’re still looking at undoctored photos of a real car, right? Well, not always. Over the weekend, a Bring A Trailer listing went live with a beige 1999 Cadillac DeVille. Florida-spec vinyl toupee, 81,000 miles, your average retired-well church-on-Sunday car. Normally, this wouldn’t be noteworthy, but something strange is going on in the photos.
Now, let’s preface this by saying that there are some acceptable uses of generative AI in car photography. Using generative fill to remove unwanted lamp posts in the background isn’t dissimilar to clone-stamping them out, and can produce far neater results. Digitally extending the existing sky and pavement to turn a 3:2 photo into a 9:16 photo for social media is similar to just using copy-paste to extend a solid-color static background, and doesn’t fundamentally alter the subject of the photo.
However, this photo set doesn’t appear to be altered in those ways. Instead, it’s turned into an aggravating game of spot-the-difference, to the point where you would second-guess whether this Cadillac exists in anything close to its presented state.
Photo credit: Bring A Trailer seller
Right out of the gate, we’re off to a rough start with a garbled licence plate. The photo above has been cropped in, but otherwise is identical to the one in the listing. While messed-up text is a hallmark of AI-generated imagery, modern phones have also been known to turn legible text into gibberish characters through photo processing. However, other stuff also seems fishy.
Photo credit: Cadillac
Here’s a photo of an actual late-’90s DeVille, and right out of the gate, there are differences. Mirrors that aren’t droopy, a very different layout of elements in the headlights, four horizontal slats in the grille rather than three, that sort of stuff. A phone camera’s image processing alone doesn’t explain these differences, and another photo of the auction DeVille makes things clearer.
Photo credit: Bring A Trailer seller
That’s the correct number of horizontal grille slats and the correct headlight layout, but two main things stick out here. The first is a different style of wheel, the second is whatever’s going on with that hood ornament. It’s a little hard to tell without zooming in, but that’s not a Cadillac crest.
Photo credit: Bring A Trailer seller
Around back, those aren’t DeVille tail lights, the wheels are different from the ones in both front three-quarter shots, that trunk emblem is clearly incorrect, and what’s going on with that licence plate?
Photo credit: Bring A Trailer seller
Moving to the left rear three-quarter view, we get another completely different set of taillights, a different rear emblem, a new and unusual licence plate, different bumper trim, and painted lower trims. Never mind the unpainted-looking door handles, the random fender emblem, or yet another different style of alloy wheel.
This crop-in on the image above grants a better view of the suspicious wheel and plate. Photo: Bring A Trailer seller
There definitely appears to be some generative stuff going on here, and that’s before we get to the interior.
Photo credit: Bring A Trailer seller
Hang on, is that a cobblestone floor? I know the “Top Gear” cottage-themed S-Class struck a chord, but what we’re looking at here just doesn’t seem real. The shadowing from the rear seat squab doesn’t look right, and shouldn’t there be a door threshold at the bottom edge of the picture?
Photo credit: Bring A Trailer seller
Ah, yep. In this alternate angle, the carpet in the left rear footwell and, well, everything low and up-front disappears, replaced by stonework imagery. Someone’s been blatantly manipulating these photos with results that just aren’t real or representative of the actual vehicle.
Photo credit: Bring A Trailer seller
In case that wasn’t enough for you, how about two column-mounted shifters and no ignition barrel – or is the stalk sprouting from it? That’s definitely carpet up front, but like, what are we doing here?
Photo credit: Bring A Trailer seller
Oh, and the door frame above the mirror is just gone. Where’d it go? I don’t know, into the digital ether or something.
Screenshot: Bring A Trailer
It didn’t take long for commenters to start piling on this listing. From “This listing is an AI trainwreck” to “What in the AI slop pics?
Screenshot: Bring A Trailer
Some struck a more humorous tone, such as “Come on guys, we all know the 1999 DeVille is 20 feet long on the left side, 14 feet long on the right side, somewhere between 25 and 30 pavers wide, and could be ordered with the rare A-pillar delete.” Nicely done.
Screenshot: Bring A Trailer
It took a few hours after the listing went live for Bring A Trailer to respond to initial comments, and the first communication could’ve gone over better.
Hello all,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the gallery photos. We share your concern about the authenticity of the images and are working with @seller to obtain additional images of the car. We will update the listing as soon as they’re available.
While the firm had eyes on the situation, the big question is why this was allowed to go live in the first place. Bring A Trailer director of customer experience David Duke commented on the listing after it had been withdrawn, writing:
We definitely understand the concerns raised by this situation. We want to make it clear that every listing on BaT is created by BaT staff and we are reviewing internally how these photos were missed by our team.
The legitimacy and accuracy of photos in an online auction is obviously of utmost importance and something we cannot allow to be manipulated by AI.
We very much appreciate the oversight and input of the community on this auction, which enabled us to react as quickly as possible to the photo manipulations that we missed when arranging the photo gallery. We do not think the seller was intending to purposely mislead anyone but was simply mistaken in their efforts to make the car look as appealing as possible. We certainly should have caught this before the auction went live, and for that we sincerely apologize.
Screenshot: Bring A Trailer
A few hours later, Head of Auctions Howard Swig commented the following:
Thanks for all the comments and deserving criticism on this listing. This is clearly a huge error on our part with multiple points of failure in our process allowing this listing to make its way through our system and live on the site. Some folks may be surprised to learn that our curation, editing, and quality control processes are all very human efforts at BaT without reliance on computer algorithms or AI. The team works hard to put out accurate and vetted listings every day, but we screwed up here and will own that.
We have had a few memorable blunders over the years and I can say that more than a few of those were entirely my fault! I am also sure we will encounter more AI-related challenges in the future and that this won’t be the last mistake we make. So I hope this listing can serve as a wake up call for us to review where things went wrong and how we can prevent this from happening again.
When you’re paying a five-percent buyer’s fee, you’d expect better lot representation than you’d find on Facebook Marketplace. For a premium service, not catching these photos erodes trust and can harm an entity’s reputation. The big questions now are: What were these multiple points of failure, and what systems will Bring A Trailer implement in order to prevent this from happening again? “Multiple points of failure” suggests that multiple eyes saw these photos and rubber-stamped them. What prevented employees from taking a closer look and flagging them? I’ve reached out to Bring A Trailer and will update you should I hear back.
Photo credit: Bring A Trailer seller
In a strange way, it’s a good thing that the listing photos for this DeVille were awful, because the manipulation of them was obvious. Considering how awful many AI-generated cars were just three years ago, the scarier hypothetical is: what happens if generative AI image software gets really good? If software like MidJourney, Nano Banana, and the like is eventually able to vomit up a full image gallery of a vehicle without any errors, the potential for misuse would be huge.
If the technology exists to convincingly and without any skill required remove rust, reconstruct peeling lacquer, or edit out a tear in a seat with only a few prompts, what’s to stop an unscrupulous seller from doing just that? One potential solution to that hypothetical would be for auction sites’ representatives or partners to physically inspect each vehicle, but the labor involved in that drastically changes the business model. Those people’s time is money, and so a seller fee may be required. For the rest of us buying from the normal used car classifieds, what we see in a few years’ time might not actually be a car as it exists in real life (and while a description that doesn’t represent true condition is an issue with or without AI, AI can definitely hide a lot more). I’d certainly be cross if I drove an hour to see a car with a huge scrape that wasn’t disclosed.
Top graphic images: Bring A Trailer seller; DepositPhotos.com
