There are thousands of varieties of hosta — a leafy decorative plant that you’ve probably seen adorning outdoor spaces — being cultivated around the world, in a luxurious spread of colors, sizes, and textures. The hardy and easy-to-care-for plants thrive in the shade and can grow enormous leaves, making them a perfect project for amateur gardeners.
Yet despite the glorious natural biodiversity that already exists in the species, scammers on TikTok are using AI-generated slop videos to sell dubious seeds for hosta varieties that don’t exist.
A quick search for “hosta seeds” reveals countless videos of unnaturally colored hostas, from a fictitious variety featuring enormous, purple leaves, to “God’s rainbow,” a made-up plant that grows garish, rainbow-colored foliage, described as “so magical, your neighbors will think it isn’t real,” according to a robotic-sounding AI voiceover.
“It’s called midnight blue heart,” a voiceover says in a separate video. “A rare black and blue hosta that looks like it came from another planet.”
“It’s magical, it’s hardy, and only a few dollars,” the voice continues. “Tap the link below to order and bring the midnight blue heart home.”
The obvious hallmarks of half-baked AI are impossible to ignore, from water streams from garden hoses that flow straight through the foliage or miss the plant entirely to seeds that magically float by themselves while held in a hand. Many of the videos even claim their miraculous hostas can thrive even in snowy conditions, which is a nonsense prospect: hostas may be perennial, but aren’t very frost-tolerant and sustain damage from freezing temperatures.
The bizarre trend is part of a much larger deluge of AI slop drowning out human-authored content across social media platforms.
Author Bree Bridges noticed her TikTok feed becoming overwhelmed by the videos.
“TikTok has started giving me AI-generated garden content with videos of people supposedly growing plants that quite clearly look like they came from the ‘Avatar’ planet,” Bridges wrote in a post on Bluesky.
“And also they’re watering them indoors sometimes while watering the carpet and they grow in three days,” she added.
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