Overview

• Creators are generating photorealistic images of a disheveled man inside private spaces to alarm family members, then posting the exchanges on TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat.
• One TikTok video drew over 5 million likes as the #homelessmanprank hashtag surpassed 1,200 posts, with tutorials showing how to produce the images.
• Law enforcement in Salem, Massachusetts; Dorset, England; Ireland; Oak Harbor, Washington; and Round Rock, Texas, issued warnings, calling the stunt dangerous, dehumanizing, and a waste of resources.
• The Brown County Sheriff’s Office in Ohio reported two incidents linked to the trend and said two juveniles were criminally charged.
• TikTok applied AI labels to flagged videos, OpenAI’s ChatGPT declined to generate such imagery, Google’s Gemini produced one on request, and cited tools include Gemini’s Nano Banana and MyEdit’s AI Replace with watermarks that can be cropped out.