Elderly couple travels for hours just to find tourist attraction was AI-generated

An elderly couple in Malaysia traveled 300 kilometers (186 miles) to visit a tourist attraction that they later found doesn’t exist.

It’s not easy figuring out what’s real online and what’s not. Add artificial intelligence (AI) to the mix, and distinguishing reality from fiction becomes next to impossible.

There are telltale signs that a video is generated using AI, but for those who are perhaps less tech savvy or not well-versed in internet culture, it can be harder to spot.

What makes it worse is that AI-generated videos are getting so convincing that people are being fooled into thinking there are places in the world that don't actually exist. In some cases, they're even trying to visit them.

This is exactly what happened to an elderly couple who traveled across Malaysia to visit a tourist attraction generated entirely using AI.

As reported by The Straits Times, the couple traveled 300 kilometers from Kuala Lumpur to Perak to visit a cable car they’d seen in an online video.

Upon arrival, the elderly couple excitedly asked hotel staff if they’d ridden the cable car. The hotel staff member was reportedly very confused and asked the couple if they were joking.

The couple then revealed that they had traveled hundreds of kilometers to visit the attraction they’d seen online.

The video depicts a fake reporter from TV Rakyat, a popular Malaysian TV channel, interviewing tourists and people visiting the attraction.

While convincing to the untrained eye, some clues suggest that the video isn’t genuine.

But the elderly couple didn’t know any better, and once they showed the video to the hotel worker, even the employee was shocked to learn that it was made using AI.

The elderly woman was so enraged that she said she was planning to sue the reporter in the video, until the hotel employee had to remind her that the reporter wasn’t real, The Straits Times reported.

The incident reportedly went viral on social media, which sparked concerns surrounding the proliferation of AI-generated content.

The video gained so much attention that local police told the public to be wary of AI-generated content and to verify its legitimacy.