Fury after ‘scammers use AI images of couple to lure shoppers to fake Birmingham shop’

Customers are fuming after they were sent ‘cheap metal rubbish’ instead of sparkling new jewellery

A warning has been issued after a BBC probe found scammers were using AI-generated images of a married couple to lure shoppers into buying cheap, tacky products from a ‘fake’ business.

‘C’est La Vie’, a Facebook page and website that had claimed to be a family-run jewellery business in Birmingham, has been uncovered as a scam.

The ‘shop’ had a returns address in China, BBC investigators found, despite claiming it had been run by married couple Eileen and Patrick for 29 years in the Jewellery Quarter.

Images of the couple online, seen by BirminghamLive, were clearly AI-generated.

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Adverts for C’est La Vie later claimed it was shutting down with an ’80 per cent off’ clearance sale after Patrick had ‘died’.

One angry customer, apparently lured in by the fake sob story, posted on Trustpilot claiming they had received “lumps of resin” and “cheap metal rubbish” instead of sparkling new jewellery.

Another victim, writing on the review website on October 1, said: “Total and utter scumbag scammers. 9ct Gold jewellery is actually cheap tack tat, from China…£60-plus wasted on rubbish.

“How these fraudsters get away with it, is beyond me. Currently trying to get reimbursed through my bank.”

Eight days later, a third person wrote: “Scam company. Similar to others, I had issues trying to return items that I was not satisfied with. Items looked cheap and not as shown on site.

A fourth said: “Complete scam…[they] advertise on Facebook. I attempted to cancel order on the day I placed it they strung it out and dispatched the parcel. It’s a bag of ‘tat’ and nothing like what I ordered.”

Warning issued

Mark Lee, the professor of Artificial Intelligence at University of Birmingham, spoke to the BBC after reviewing the C’est La Vie website, which now claims it has ‘sold out’ of all products.

A message on the website reads: “Thank you for being a part of our story.”

“Previously there were obvious clues,” said Mr Lee.

“For instance, AI had difficulty generating realistic hands with plausible finger placement. This seems well done but the images look a little bit too perfect and staged to be real.”

BBC reported how the businesses name briefly changed to ‘Alice and Fred’ before returning to its C’est La Vie branding.

Mr Lee warned: “AI is becoming better every day and soon the challenge might not be to prove whether the site is AI-generated but whether there’s actually a real human involved at all.”

BirminghamLive approached C’est La Vie for comment via the email provided on its website but have not yet received a response.