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AI Faked Images on Auction Listing

PTG_96
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I came across this listing for a 9kt gold Omega dress watch at a small UK auction house. It looked a bit uncanny from the thumbnail, and it wasn’t difficult to determine that it was put through AI because they didn’t even bother to remove the Gemini watermark.

Behold the rare diagonally brushed OMBGA dial:
IMG_1765.webp IMG_1764.webp


I contacted the auction house, requesting they either withdraw the lot or post unedited photos. They did not respond, but did remove only the below picture in which AI had hallucinated a gibberish engraving approximate to an Omega inner case back. The auction went ahead this morning and sold at a hammer price of £700 😬.
IMG_1762.webp


I do despair that this sort of thing may become more and more common.
 
K
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Damn, this is absolutely disgusting behaviour for a legit auction site. Wait till the ebay scammers start using AI...
 
noelekal
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K kvikster
Damn, this is absolutely disgusting behaviour for a legit auction site. Wait till the ebay scammers start using AI...
I'm sure they already do.
 
watchmann44232
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I would imagine reality will strike sellers pretty quickly when people receive their actual watches that aren't a good match for AI enhanced advertised/purchased watch and (rightfully!) get mad about it and return their purchases.

That said, LLMs are getting pretty good at all kinds of image restoration and enhancement so I can see that outright scamster and other unscrupulous characters will take advantage of that. Unfortunately.

Anyways, to demonstrate what can be done today rather leisurely, please see below a random 💩 dial from a random Ebay listing restored (using GPT-5.6 Sol) with prompt "This is a photo of Omega Ref 14701 Seamaster. The dial is damaged. Can you please restore the dial in the photo to it's original glory. Yellow on the dial isn't original color but discoloration. Original dial is/was a rare pink as in pink panther honeycomb dial before it melted to cheese shown in the photo."

seamasterpink.webp

🤷‍♂️
Edited:
 
Jorge 3
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PTG_96 PTG_96
I came across this listing for a 9kt gold Omega dress watch at a small UK auction house. It looked a bit uncanny from the thumbnail, and it wasn’t difficult to determine that it was put through AI because they didn’t even bother to remove the Gemini watermark.

Behold the rare diagonally brushed OMBGA dial:
IMG_1765.webp IMG_1764.webp


I contacted the auction house, requesting they either withdraw the lot or post unedited photos. They did not respond, but did remove only the below picture in which AI had hallucinated a gibberish engraving approximate to an Omega inner case back. The auction went ahead this morning and sold at a hammer price of £700 😬.
IMG_1762.webp


I do despair that this sort of thing may become more and more common.
Good eye! I actually came across the same auction and saved a couple of their watches in Chrome for later. I will have to double check none of them have the same watermark. Thanks!
 
workandturn
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Im a graphic designer who uses ai regularly for work and I also buy and sell vintage watches on the side and I would say that the average person could use ai to fake things convincingly with minimal knowledge so be prepared to see a lot more of this !
 
workandturn
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PTG_96 PTG_96
I came across this listing for a 9kt gold Omega dress watch at a small UK auction house. It looked a bit uncanny from the thumbnail, and it wasn’t difficult to determine that it was put through AI because they didn’t even bother to remove the Gemini watermark.

Behold the rare diagonally brushed OMBGA dial:
IMG_1765.webp IMG_1764.webp


I contacted the auction house, requesting they either withdraw the lot or post unedited photos. They did not respond, but did remove only the below picture in which AI had hallucinated a gibberish engraving approximate to an Omega inner case back. The auction went ahead this morning and sold at a hammer price of £700 😬.
IMG_1762.webp


I do despair that this sort of thing may become more and more common.
Pretty shocking ! A lot of people are using ai to enhance images taken on a phone or low quality camera without understanding that ai can fundamentally change the image. So if we're nice we could say they were just trying to make it look a bit nicer, the not so nice version is that it's an out right scam.
 
Cartesian
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PTG_96 PTG_96
I came across this listing for a 9kt gold Omega dress watch at a small UK auction house. It looked a bit uncanny from the thumbnail, and it wasn’t difficult to determine that it was put through AI because they didn’t even bother to remove the Gemini watermark.

Behold the rare diagonally brushed OMBGA dial:
IMG_1765.webp IMG_1764.webp


I contacted the auction house, requesting they either withdraw the lot or post unedited photos. They did not respond, but did remove only the below picture in which AI had hallucinated a gibberish engraving approximate to an Omega inner case back. The auction went ahead this morning and sold at a hammer price of £700 😬.
IMG_1762.webp


I do despair that this sort of thing may become more and more common.
That's pretty disappointing - though at least it seems to be a nearly surefire way for an auction house to quickly lose a large swath of its customer base
 
PTG_96
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workandturn workandturn
Pretty shocking ! A lot of people are using ai to enhance images taken on a phone or low quality camera without understanding that ai can fundamentally change the image. So if we're nice we could say they were just trying to make it look a bit nicer, the not so nice version is that it's an out right scam.
In this case I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and say it was unscrupulous behaviour rather than deliberately misleading: the rest of the auction featured some truly shocking and often out of focus photography which certainly had not been enhanced in any way!

It’s the sort of auction house that is very much dealing in high volume rather than high value, so sometimes there is a deal to be found where they don’t really know what they are selling, if you are willing to wade through all the shite!
 
AHW
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Currently on eBay. Either AI touch up or a redial attempted at sea, during a storm, whilst drunk.

IMG_2973.webp
 
PTG_96
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AHW AHW
Currently on eBay. Either AI touch up or a redial attempted at sea, during a storm, whilst drunk.

IMG_2973.webp
Ah yes, the ol’ Salvador Dali melting redial
 
workandturn
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AHW AHW
Currently on eBay. Either AI touch up or a redial attempted at sea, during a storm, whilst drunk.

IMG_2973.webp
Oh thats shocking
 
workandturn
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PTG_96 PTG_96
In this case I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and say it was unscrupulous behaviour rather than deliberately misleading: the rest of the auction featured some truly shocking and often out of focus photography which certainly had not been enhanced in any way!

It’s the sort of auction house that is very much dealing in high volume rather than high value, so sometimes there is a deal to be found where they don’t really know what they are selling, if you are willing to wade through all the shite!
those are the places to find the undiscovered treasures
 
AHW
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Lug Lug
I did a reverse image search.

It's....... Bolton Auction Rooms' account.

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/...1058/lot-3f89927b-d40e-4c76-8e3f-b49c00ee90df

I have only recently started buying at this type of auction (3 in total) and funnily enough they are one of them.

Normally I always ask for extra pictures as they tend to be better for some reason. But this time I only saw the watch right before the auction and took a risk. Didn’t see any sign of AI editing on the photos, but maybe I was lucky.
 
watchmann44232
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It's also likely that we will see more and more of these 'enhanced' photos devoid of ill intent because computation photography and especially in-phone AI enhancing the photos without users thinking twice about it. Here is link to [BBC] where they talk about this.

That said, auctioneers etc. should know better for the photos they shoot. EBay and others where sellers shoot their own photos may be in a hot water if aggressive AI/LLM enhancement of photos becomes more and more commonplace in the phones.

Heck, with my about generation or two old phone when I sometimes take a photo for WRUV today etc. thread, especially in poor light, it 'enhances' it to the point that my heart skips a beat and I have to get loupe/better lightning as to double check if the dial has been painted (and then take new photo in a better lightning (or go straight to the bottle...)).

[BBC] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260203-the-ai-that-quietly-edits-all-of-your-photos
 
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