Tourist warning: Don't get tricked into visiting AI-generated destinations

Videos made with artificial intelligence (AI) are now tricking tourists into visiting places that do not exist. According to recent reports, a couple excitedly traveled for hours for a chance to take a mountaintop cable car called the Kuak Skyride. The couple had seen the video online, with tourists smiling and a TV host narrating the experience.

However, things were not the same when the couple arrived at the location. They met a small town and confused locals who were unaware of what they were talking about. Turns out the video was generated using AI, and the couple had believed that it was real.

“Why do they do this to people?” the elderly Malaysian woman asked as she discovered that the dream location was fabricated using the generative artificial engine created by Google, Veo3.

AI is making people believe fake videos

According to the hotel worker they asked, the elderly Malaysian woman had stumbled on the video on TikTok, alerting her husband to the location. Both of them had been impressed by the views and were going to try it out. The video was so convincing that the TV host rode in the tram and interviewed happy tourists. However, what they failed to catch was the Veo3 logo at the bottom right corner of the video, showing that the video was made with the tool.

While the confusion remains laughable, it shows another harmful part of artificial intelligence. This incident did not require criminals or scammers trying to goad them into paying to visit a dream destination or sending them a false link to register to visit the destination, but it still shows how easy it is for malicious actors to carry out illicit activities with such videos.

AI has made it hard to spot the difference between real events and fake ones. It has made even the slightest activity like planning a vacation something that people need to be watchful about. This Malaysian couple’s experience might look like an isolated incident, but it also shows that we need to start questioning our trust in things that we see, hear, or experience in a world where AI can manufacture anything with ease and terrifying precision.

The artificial intelligence blackhole continues to grow

The numbers also back the perspective of the collective descent into digital deception. For instance, deepfake attacks have risen from about 0.1% of all fraud attempts three years ago to about 6.5% today, a big 2,137% jump that represents one in every 15 fraud cases, as indicated by identity services company Signicat in its February 2025 report.

The statistics are not just numbers, as they have real victims behind them. A typical example is Steve Beauchamp, an 82-year-old retiree who withdrew the entire $690,000 in his retirement fund after watching deepfake videos of Elon Musk promoting an investment scheme. “I mean, the picture of him—it was him,” Beauchamp told The New York Times. After the unfortunate incident, his life savings vanished into the digital void.

The scope of AI-powered deception has also touched every aspect of the human experience. British engineering company Arup lost more than $25 million after one of its employees was tricked during a video conference call featuring a deepfake of the company’s CFO and other staff members. A school principal also received death threats after an AI-manipulated video showed him making racist and antisemitic remarks. It was later discovered that his athletics director made the video to discredit him.

Tourism was already deep in manufactured reality before AI perfected the art of deception. Social media has changed travel into selfie tourism as most visitors go to holiday-worthy destinations just to take the best shots for Instagram. UNESCO also declared a three-alarm fire on this, warning that travelers are now visiting iconic landmarks to “primarily take and share photos of themselves, often with iconic landmarks in the background.”

Cryptopolitan Academy: Want to grow your money in 2025? Learn how to do it with DeFi in our upcoming webclass. Save Your Spot