A series of images with flowers that appear to have an appearance similar to that of the face of a kitten have gained popularity on the Internet in recent weeks. They are not real flowers, but images created by AI which are also being used to scam to those interested in buying the seeds of a flower that does not exist: cat's eye dazzlea name that could be translated as “cat's eye glare.”
According to the news verification site Snopes, the Facebook account StorieSpot published on April 17, in the National Geographic Wild Planet group, not related to National Geographic, the images of the supposed flower. The post has since been shared more than 43,000 times and has generated nearly 7,000 comments, many of them expressing interest in purchasing cat's eye dazzle seeds. The post only said “Amazing plants! cat's eye dazzle”, but It did not invite purchase or add any explanation or context..
The media has verified, using AI detection tools, such as aiornot.com and isitai.com, that the images are artificial and that they have been first generated with artificial intelligence and then retouched with Adobe Photoshop to add greater verisimilitude. Also that there are no references on the internet about a flower called cat's eye dazzle before 2024.
But the flower is not only fake, but it is being used to defraud those interested in growing it by selling supposed cat's eye dazzle seeds. They can be found in eBaywhere a search at the time of writing returns almost 200 results, and on websites such as imseeds.com, gardenerstar.com, foundseed.com and dailyrosy.com.
In all of them an extraordinary variety of cat's eye dazzle is for sale that are no longer limited only to the appearance of the first publication detected on Facebook, but expand the range of animals that the plant resemblesincluding several types of cats, others that you no longer know if they are dogs or cats and even pandas.
All nonsense that nevertheless sells for prices close to 10 euros for each package of 50 seeds. As verified by Snopes, the domain registration information for these seed stores on ICANN.org places them all in China.