Bring A Trailer Accidentally Lists An AI-Altered Cadillac For Sale
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.
Bring a Trailer's response
The listing's comment section lit up instantly with people calling out the AI slop photos. Bring a Trailer first posted the following comment:
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the gallery photos. We share your concern about the authenticity of the images and are working with @seller to obtain additional images of the car. We will update the listing as soon as they're available.
This caused an even bigger firestorm in the comments. How could any additional images be trusted not to be AI-generated as well? Within hours, however, Bring a Trailer withdrew the auction. Its staff has since been active in the comments apologizing for the mistake:
We definitely understand the concerns raised by this situation. We want to make it clear that every listing on BaT is created by BaT staff and we are reviewing internally how these photos were missed by our team.
The legitimacy and accuracy of photos in an online auction is obviously of utmost importance and something we cannot allow to be manipulated by AI.
We very much appreciate the oversight and input of the community on this auction, which enabled us to react as quickly as possible to the photo manipulations that we missed when arranging the photo gallery. We certainly should have caught this before the auction went live, and for that we sincerely apologize.
-David Duke
Director of Customer Experience
Howard Swig, Head of Auctions, added:
Thanks for all the comments and deserving criticism on this listing. This is clearly a huge error on our part with multiple points of failure in our process allowing this listing to make its way through our system and live on the site. Some folks may be surprised to learn that our curation, editing, and quality control processes are all very human efforts at BaT without reliance on computer algorithms or AI. The team works hard to put out accurate and vetted listings every day, but we screwed up here and will own that.
We have had a few memorable blunders over the years and I can say that more than a few of those were entirely my fault! I am also sure we will encounter more AI-related challenges in the future and that this won't be the last mistake we make. So I hope this listing can serve as a wake up call for us to review where things went wrong and how we can prevent this from happening again.
Bring a Trailer seems to have learned a valuable lesson here. Although it may be more of a low-mileage used car lot than it used to be, the site has built a trustworthy reputation over the years, which is vital when customers are buying and selling high-dollar cars with only written descriptions and digital photos. A slip-up like this completely undermines that trust, especially when commenters quickly call out obvious AI images that slipped through BaT's "multiple points of failure." The comments pulled no punches in making this point.
Owning the mistake is a good first step toward rebuilding BaT's credibility. Its photography guide currently makes no mention of AI, but should probably set some limits on what AI usage, if any, is acceptable. It's all too easy to cover up dents, rust, and a ripped interior with a little help from AI while generating even more pollution, making up motorcycles that don't exist, and creating fake blog posts. (Despite what many of you say in the comments, Jalopnik and Static Media have a strict anti-AI policy. I am not AI. I am a meat popsicle.)