A man so terrible at drawing, millions have accused him of being ChatGPT.
Zuru’s Nightmare Nappies
David Farrier’s Webworm looks at Zuru’s Millie Moon’s diapers, as parents & consumer groups allege rashes, redness, swelling, blisters, peeling & “bleeding” on babies bottoms. What does Nick Mowbray’s company have to say about it?
Hi,
I’m so happy, you lot.
Webworm Live 2026 in New Zealand is almost sold out – there are just a few tickets left upstairs. This means so much to me – thank you.
Same thing with next week’s Tickled screenings in New York – thank you.
Now – onto today’s Webworm: Imagine you’re so terrible at something, millions come for your throat, accusing you of being AI. How do you defend yourself from a world so utterly warped by AI slop, they can’t differentiate it from plain-old human slop?
After all, humans are the sloppiest of them all.
Dylan Reeve has today’s Webworm.
So Untalented, He Was Accused of Being AI
by Dylan Reeve.
On Monday evening, a roofer from Southland posted an image to his Facebook page riffing on the frustration many people feel with modern social media (and, increasingly, real life) where they are seemingly bombarded with AI-generated ‘slop’ ads for every other business they encounter.
“I’m sick of all the A.I. made ads. Here’s mine: I’m a roofer” read the seemingly hand-drawn promotional image, showing a before and after of a leaky roof and a nice new one, alongside a smiling tradie and his van:
It went viral quickly! The original post was widely shared on Facebook, and screenshots quickly found their way onto other pages and platforms. But to many users it all looked a bit, well, AI.
It was, honestly, my first reaction too – and it seemed like that latent distrust of anything online was lurking just beneath the surface for a significant proportion of those commenting.
Those suspicious users were quick to deliver their proof, with nearly identical posts from other businesses demonstrating that this was just one more in a long long of AI templates allowing lazy companies to bombard social media.
It seemed pretty open and shut to many of the thousands of commenters. For some the whole experience delivered a substantial hit to their overall sense of trust.
But there was just one thing nagging at me: None of the other examples seemed to be older than the one posted by Southland Roof Repairs. In fact, they had all appeared after that post was already going viral on Facebook.
When checked with SynthID AI-watermark tools, the near identical examples that I found returned a positive result for having been generated with OpenAI tools. The same wasn’t true for Southland Roof Repairs’ version, which showed no AI watermarks.
I did note there were other, older, examples of the same idea, which were clearly AI generated:
But I wanted to know more, so I reached out to Anton, from Southland Roof Repairs, to find out how it all went down – and confirm my assessment that the image he posted was a real drawing.
Spoiler: I’m convinced. It’s a real, physical drawing, not something generated by AI.
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