How Spammers and Scammers Leverage AI-Generated Images on Facebook for Audience Growth

Much of the research and discourse on risks from artificial intelligence (AI) image generators, such as
DALL-E and Midjourney, has centered around whether they could be used to inject false information into
political discourse. We show that spammers and scammers—seemingly motivated by profit or clout, not
ideology—are already using AI-generated images to gain significant traction on Facebook. At times, the
Facebook Feed is recommending unlabeled AI-generated images to users who neither follow the Pages
posting the images nor realize that the images are AI-generated, highlighting the need for improved
transparency and provenance standards as AI models proliferate.