Cybercriminals have been carrying out a very common SEO scam for years: someone claims ownership of an image and demands that a link to a specific website be included, which boosts it in search results. Although, as we said, this has been done for a long time, scammers now have it easier than ever thanks to generative AI and they are perfecting this type of scams.
According to the website 404Media, the editor of the website Tedium received a “copyright infringement notice” by email last week from a law firm called Commonwealth Legal.
Just like in other similar attempts to deceive the recipient, the sender claimed to be contacting him “in relation to an image” linked to his client. In this case, the sender demanded that a “visible and clickable link” be added to a website called “tech4gods” below the supposedly stolen photo.
As Tedium actually used a photo from a royalty-free provider, the editor investigated the claim, found the law firm’s website, and upon closer inspection, realized that the images of their lawyers had been generated by AI.
As pointed out by 404Media, the images of the lawyers had empty gazes that are usually seen in photos created by AI tools. If you do a reverse image search on them, you will get results from a website with the URL generated.photos, which uses artificial intelligence to create “unique and worry-free model photos… from scratch”.
The editor also discovered that the law firm’s address, supposedly located on the fourth floor of a building, points to a single-story structure on Google Street View. The owner of tech4gods said he had nothing to do with the scam, but admitted to buying backlinks for his website.
