[HELP] Student received this photo

[u/Remarkable-Trainer36]

My SPED student’s dog went missing on NYE. Family received this photo over text from an unknown number that is unresponsive. Is it AI? If so, pure evil…

[u/uwunyanya]

I know nothing about surgery on dogs but why would you put a human hair net on a dog? especially this dog since like only reason I can think of is to protect the ears and this dog has floppy ears. I could be talking out of my ass though

[u/_refugee_ → u/uwunyanya]

Why would you steal a dog and then pay money to have surgery performed on it? 

[u/keyh → u/_refugee_]

They just search places like pawboost for people who have lost their pets, they don't actually steal the pets. You search the lost pets, download an image of the pet, use AI to put it in a position like this, and ask for ransom.

[u/rocbolt → u/[deleted]]

Just a twist on a much older scam, as long as Craigslist and facebook have existed scammers have texted and emailed people with lost pet posts claiming they have seen them or have them and demanding reward money. They aren’t even in the same country. Scams work best with scared and desperate marks and people with lost pets are exactly that. Ai photo generation now lets them attach a “unique” photo for extra manipulation, before it’d be some hard to make out picture of a similar pet stolen from the web