Maybe TikTok was a bad idea after all.
If you aren’t on TikTok, there’s been a prank going around lately where users will create AI images of a strange man in their house and send it to their friends or family, telling them that a homeless man walked into their house.
Yes, really.
@mmmjoemele PLEASE WAIT FOR IT 😂
Well as you can expect, we’ve seen a few instances of the prank going wrong. In one case, a woman’s parents actually called police for her after she sent the AI-generated images of the man in her home, causing officers to show up and forcing her to explain that it was just a prank for TikTok. (And of course, she videoed the interaction with police…and posted it to TikTok).
@aubreydontknowyou My sister almost got arrested bru😭#fyppppppppppppppppppppppp #homlessmanprank #funny
But that’s not the dumbest thing we’ve seen come out of this prank. Because one Florida woman actually tried to pull the prank ON THE POLICE.
According to the St. Petersburg Police Department, 32-year old Brooke Schinault (this woman is 32-years old and doing this stuff, y’all) reported a home invasion to police, and when they arrived on scene showed them a picture of the alleged suspect in her home.
Well the officers left when they didn’t find any evidence of a crime, but Schinault called them AGAIN to report that the man had sexually battered her.
I know we talk a lot about how stupid Florida Man is, but Florida Woman really deserves some credit too. This is just an all-time dumb move.
Well when officers arrived the second time, St. Pete PD spokeswoman Ashley Limardo says that’s when officers realized that the photos were generated by ChatGPT:
“During that second call, we were able to contact one of our detectives upstairs to kind of get them to look over the evidence that we had and kind of give our officers at the scene some advice on how they should proceed with this case. As soon as that detective saw the images, immediately, she recognized it as a trend that we were seeing online.”
Investigators reportedly found the photo in Schinault’s deleted folder, and realized that she had actually created it a few days earlier.
Well the woman was arrested and charged with two counts of false reporting of a crime. She’s since been released on bond and is due back in court on December 1.
Limardo says this the first time the department’s had to deal with a crime that turned out to be a TikTok prank, but it likely won’t be the last:
“There are consequences. This is the first time we’ve ever had to deal with something like this, and again, the main issue here is that now, let’s say that we were also dealing with another urgent matter at the same time that this call came in. Essentially, that’s a waste of resources because we have people tied up working on this scene when they could be working on something that is actually real and urgent that would be more beneficial.”
I hope the internet clout was worth the criminal record.
