This is not going to be a short post, so if you want to read it till the end, you may as well make yourself a coffee, or a tea and enjoy it while reading my post. I mean enjoy your drink, not the post. Or ... you can enjoy the post too :P
The whole thing started about two months ago. I've mentioned in some of my posts, that I'm selling everything I don't need. This thing has been brewing in me for some time but lack of time has stopped me in taking action. Last fall however time came and I got the perfect (so it seemed at that time) platform that allowed me to do that.
The platform basically is a huge flee market if you will, where you can sell your used, or preloved items, as my dear friend 
If you paid attention to the previous paragraph, I said all you have to do is take some photos of the item you want to sell. This is a no brainer as you have to show what you're selling, in order to sell it, but not everyone understands it, or better yet, not everyone wants to understand it. What's been happening is that cheap products from Chinese platforms (not specifying their name here, avoiding making publicity for them) flooded this place, which would not be necessarily a problem, but what most of the users do is upload the photos from the Chinese platform and state that the product is exactly like the one on the photo, which is a big fat lie.
This is a huge problem, firstly because you are not seeing the product they are selling (or trying to sell), you see a similar product on a photo, manipulated to look appealing to the buyers and secondly, because there are copyright issues, but the copyright issue is the company's problem, not mine.
Now imagine how these photos you see on online shopping platforms are made. They pick a lovely model, dress her up, take photos and then literally manipulate the photos to get the desired result. This means adjusting colors, making the model slimmer using photoshop, making the shirt slimmer with a pin in the back, just to list a few tricks, but the list is long.
Then you see the user uploading a photo with a gorgeous model and they say the product looks the same, but it's size 56 and the next photo wakes you up to reality as it is nothing like the clothes on the model.
The reason behind such an action is, that they can't compete with the original photo, the chances to make a better one are slim to none, so then why don't use that to sell what you want, right?
So let's take it step by step. First, the selling company is manipulating buyers by posting heavily manipulated photos. Then the user is manipulating you by posting a photo that is about a similar product, but not the one they are actually trying to sell.
Last week I met my cousin, who's in process of buying a car from Sweden. He showed me the photos and after a careful look, I saw at the corner of the images it said AI-generated. I asked my cousin if he was aware of it. He told me the background is AI generated. I must admit, the photo looked as if the car would have been in the dealer's showroom, but in fact it wasn't.
Some of you may know, I'm one of the moderators in the Photography Lovers community. From time to time we get AI generated images and when I confront the user with our rules, they usually tell me, these are digital photos. Well, digital photo is what you take with a digital device, like a camera, a mobile phone and so on, but not generate images with an app.
The sad thing is, no one wants to see reality anymore. The whole thing starts from a very young age, when kids are taught to pose for the camera, to look happy in the photos. It doesn't matter how they feel, they have to pose for the camera so mom can post their photo on who knows which social media account for everyone to see what a cutie pie kid she has and all this to collect as many likes possible as there's no happiness without likes.
Then when people grow a bit older, professional photographer is hired for special occasions like birthdays, weddings, anniversaries and so on. Then you see photos so heavily manipulated, that people's skin has no pores anymore, their face has no wrinkles, ladies look 2 size slammer and so on.
This whole thing reminds me of a line Keanu Reeves had in a movie. He was invited to a very posh wedding, I think it was his dad's wedding and the guests were all millionaires, money was not a problem, so they could afford basically anything, even plastic surgery. At some point, the lady Keanu met at the wedding said his stepmother looks really great, to which Keanu said "Plastic is not aging". It was really funny, even though what he said is only partially correct. Plastic is aging as well.
Where is the end of this? To what extent can this manipulation go? Why everything has to be heavily manipulated? Why?
If you're a newbie, you may want to check out these guides:
