Police say people keep calling 911 over ‘AI-powered homeless man’ TikTok prank.

Finally, generative AI has found its purpose: allowing children to prank their parents. In an apparent new social media trend, children are creating AI-generated photos of homeless people in their homes and sending the images to their parents, causing them to panic and, in some cases, call the police to respond to the situation.

The basic premise of this prank is very simple: kids use artificial intelligence tools to create a photo of someone, usually an unkempt man who looks like he came from living on the street, in their house, and send it to their parents. Children pretend that the person claimed to know their parents, or that they just wanted to come take a nap. Then they wait until their parents lose their minds and demand that the person be expelled. That’s kind of what it’s all about.

The pranksters were recording their parents’ reactions and posting them online, with some TikTok videos garnering nearly a million likes and thousands of comments. The hashtag #homelessmanprank now includes more than 1,200 videos related to it on the platform, and there are Number of lessons On how to create the necessary images for the prank, most of which recommend using Snapchat’s AI tools to create the image. Gizmodo reached out to Snapchat for comment on its platform’s role in this trend, but did not receive a response at press time.

Maybe it would be okay if the prank ended there, it’s kind of a gross exploitation of how unhoused people are viewed, and some parents say some not-so-savory things about people they think are in their house. Now, the situation has apparently broken containment on several occasions, with parents in panic calling the police and engaging law enforcement.

Several police departments across the country issued statements about the prank. Round Rock Police Department in Texas Suggested in a post on X That a prank in the town led to “misuse of emergency services.” The ministry claimed to have responded to two calls sparked by the trend, both of which turned out to be hoaxes. “Although no one was injured, filing false reports like these can lead to a restriction of emergency resources and a delay in responding to legitimate calls for service,” the department said. Gizmodo contacted the Round Rock Police Department about the situation, and the department said it had no further comment to offer beyond its general statements.

In a Posted on FacebookThe Oak Harbor Police Department in Washington said it responded to a call about a “homeless person” on the high school campus, which turned out to be a false report related to the same type of prank. “In this case, students created and posted an image indicating the presence of a homeless person on school grounds, resulting in unnecessary concern within the community,” police wrote.

The Salem Police Department in Massachusetts also issued a public statement about the trend, although it did not indicate whether its police force had actually responded to a related situation. “This prank dehumanizes homeless people, causes panic in the distressed recipient and wastes police resources. Police officers called to respond do not know this is a prank and treat the call as an actual robbery in progress, creating a potentially dangerous situation,” books.

Several reports have hit the UK as well BBC reports Dorset Police should receive a call regarding the prank. The police also issued a Paul A statement About this trend after answering a call from a parent who was the subject of a prank.

Word of the trend spread on national news, such as NBC’s “Nightly News.” He ran a slide In the story Thursday evening. In this clip, Andy McKinney, commander of the Round Rock Police Department, told NBC that receiving a call about an intruder “causes a very aggressive response for us because we’re concerned about the safety of the individuals in the home, which could mean evacuating the home with guns… and it could cause a SWAT response.” Which honestly sounds like a lot, but it also seems like a pretty normal reaction from American police.

We like to tell the kids to stick to the classics, like setting a bag of dog poop on fire, but someone in California just got… 28 days in prison For that exact prank, so maybe you don’t get any fun at all?