AI slop is everywhere these days, and it can be hard to tell what’s real, digitally altered, or completely fabricated. We regularly bring you interesting listings from Bring a Trailer, the car auction king, but one auction for a 1999 Cadillac DeVille slipped through on that familiar website that shouldn’t have. It’s not the DeVille itself that’s the problem, but that the listing contains some rather cringeworthy AI-altered images. The listing’s comment section called it out first, followed by a Reddit thread and an Instagram post by Motor1. Some of the AI elements are subtle, while others are so obvious they should never have been posted in the first place.
At first glance, this lead image seems legitimate, but look at the front license plate. The second character is somewhere between a V and a J, and the 3 at the end is misaligned. AI is bad at text inside images (PetaPixel explains why), making this a telltale sign that AI is at work here. The hood ornament looks off as well, with an incorrect crest inside a full circle. Cadillac didn’t abandon the traditional wreath in its logo until 2013.
The picture that broke the internet was this back-seat interior shot featuring a cobblestone floor. We haven’t seen anything like this since Jeremy Clarkson’s Mercedes, both because it’s a terrible idea, and because this floor is an AI hallucination that put the driveway surface inside the car. It wasn’t the only interior image this happened in, either.
The cobblestone theme continues under the hood, where it replaces the radiator and front end of the car in front of the Northstar V8. The correct front end is visible in other photos in the listing.
I’ve zoomed in on the steering wheel in one of the interior shots to show the pair of column shifters. One of them is supposed to be there, but the second one appears to be connected to the ignition switch somehow. Don’t ask me how this is supposed to work. Some other details are a bit more subtle. Here’s a photo of the back of a 1999 Cadillac DeVille from a Cars and Bids listing:
Here’s the same angle on the car in this Bring a Trailer listing:
The taillights wrap around the corner like a Cadillac STS, and are not inset as they’re supposed to be. The logos are all wrong, the rear license plate area is too smooth, and the antenna sticking out the back of the roof isn’t supposed to be there. In some photos, the landau roof blends right into the bodywork. While all the basic elements of the car are there, something looks off in just about every picture, even if it’s nothing obvious like a cobblestone floor. There are many more that I haven’t mentioned. Feel free to discuss them in the comments.
