If you can’t afford a vacation, the AI ​​app will sell you photos of one

Faking wealth has always been big business, from buying fake designers to chartering private jet “sets” for photo shoots. But these days, people are using AI to make it more personal: taking photos of themselves living their lives of leisure and luxury, not to chase clout, but as a form of personal escape or an attempt to demonstrate a better life.

App developer Tim Wijaya to publish He did consulting work for OpenAI earlier this year to study how Indonesians use ChatGPT and found several Facebook groups, some with up to 30,000 members, to share AI-generated images of themselves having luxury experiences — from posing with Lamborghinis to shopping in Gucci stores. “Most of them are users of middle and low-income Tier 2/3 cities who earn less than $400 per month,” Wijaya wrote. “It is sad and wonderful that the use of artificial intelligence has become a form of escape, allowing people to experience lives they may never live.”

Laurent Del Rey, a product designer at Meta’s Superintelligence Lab, recently created a side project called Endless Summer, a social media app “for when burnout hits and you need to show up for the soft life (that you deserve) — with fake vacation photos of you,” Del Rey said. books On X.

A slew of other AI apps have appeared on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, from “Manifest AI Coach: Dreams Made,” which promises to use AI to create “vision backgrounds” to help visualize and embody a goal; To the same tone Manifestar AI; To ManifestMe, which allows people to “create personalized visuals that align with your goals and energy.” Then there was “Clear AI: Goodbye Broken Brain,” which promised to “renew your brain in seconds,” and “Clear AI: Affirmations,” for using AI-generated affirmations every day.

It should be noted that most of these applications do not provide their descriptions accurately. I downloaded “Manifest AI Coach: Dreams Made” – which of course had the tagline “Always Be Manifesting” – as well as ManifestMe and Manifest AI, but all I found were text confirmations… plus their weird AI-generated images of gods, sunlight, and DNA sequences.

However, Endless Summer does exactly what it promises. The app invited me to take three photos of myself, which it would use as source material for its “fancy vacation photos.” This resulted in one of me in Tokyo, one of me in what looked like a store in New York (complete with AI writing on the boxes), and one of me sitting at an outdoor dinner party in Rio de Janeiro. They didn’t look much like me, but I looked cool – hey, I’ll take that.

Did I feel better watching my virtual self enjoying the good life? Not real. Maybe it’s because they have that distinct AI-generated aesthetic that reminds me they’re fake. Or maybe it’s because I don’t feel deprived of experiences in my own life — if nothing else, I live in New York City, so I can go to a bodega myself. After three pictures, I ran out of free spins. He invited me to “keep going” and “let the summer continue” by paying $3.99 for 30 photos, $17.99 for 150 photos, or $34.99 for 300 photos.

At this rate, I can pay for my own outdoor dinner (well, maybe not in New York). Or a fraction of a Spirit Airlines flight to a really new place.