Man sold everything and moved 1,200 miles for a woman who never existed
The bricklayer had no idea she was AI.
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- Edimar Rocha Martins sold his belongings and traveled 1,200 miles to meet an AI-generated woman.
- The Jessica Oliveira account had 300,000 followers and promised to support a man who moved to her farm.
- Martins learned Jessica was a hoax after asking a local radio station for help finding her.
- AI-generated personas and deepfakes are increasingly used to mislead users, sell products, or push paid chats.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
A Brazilian bricklayer sold his belongings and moved 1,200 miles for someone he believed was the love of his life, until he learned she was a lie.
What Martins didn’t know was that Jéssica wasn’t a real person. Instead, she was an AI-generated persona.
The AI persona would post videos for her 300,000 followers, asking for a man willing to move to her farm, according to the New York Post.
The account promised to support any man who moved and to ensure he would never work again in his life.
Martins would later cite loneliness as the main reason for pursuing the AI persona. However, it's likely that this loneliness, coupled with his hard manual labor and age, contributed to his decision.
It’s unclear whether Martins ever spoke to the user who ran Jéssica or to an account posing as Jéssica.
Regardless, Martins left his job, sold everything, and traveled 1,200 miles in the hopes of starting a new life with his online soulmate.
When he arrived, Martins attempted to find his lover. After failed attempts, he went to a radio station to ask about Jéssica. There, he was told that she was a hoax.
Later, Martins received assistance getting home and went to stay with his family.
Cybernews has machine-translated the caption, which claimed that the original Jéssica account had never spoken to anyone and was created solely to monetize on TikTok and sell goods on TikTok Shop.
AI influencers monetize deception
Martins isn’t the first person to experience this type of betrayal, as, since the AI boom, users have been crafting fake personas or impersonating celebrities to steal money from unsuspecting victims.
While some have been romance scams, others have used celebrities’ likenesses to peddle products.
Notably, a fake Jenna Ortega TikTok account has 1 million followers and has encouraged unsuspecting users to pay money to chat with Ortega. Of course, she isn’t real, and they’d be paying to chat with someone else.
Furthermore, AI deepfakes are becoming increasingly difficult to spot as technology advances.
Viral techniques, including the 3-finger method, have been adopted to catch scammers in the act, and platforms now require users to disclose AI-generated content in regions such as the EU. But that may not be enough.
