{"id":236293,"date":"2025-10-19T12:32:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T12:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/236293\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T12:32:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T12:32:10","slug":"scarlett-jewellery-in-hove-contacted-by-ai-firm-complainants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/236293\/","title":{"rendered":"Scarlett Jewellery in Hove contacted by ‘AI’ firm complainants"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ClaudiaClaudia Sermbezis\/BBC<\/p>\n

Ms Holmes says she has been receiving “daily phone calls, web chats and emails” from unhappy customers of a similarly named website<\/p>\n

A jeweller is spending hours each week answering complaints from unhappy customers of a similarly named but unscrupulous business.<\/p>\n

Stevie Holmes, from Hove, runs the legitimate company Scarlett Jewellery but is being mistaken for Scarlett Jewels, a website an expert says is populated with AI-generated images.<\/p>\n

Ms Holmes says she has heard from people who received substandard goods or nothing at all after ordering from the Scarlett Jewels website.<\/p>\n

Scarlett Jewels was contacted for comment.<\/p>\n

Ms Holmes said she had been receiving “daily phone calls, web chats and emails” since July from Scarlett Jewels customers who claimed they “never received” their order.<\/p>\n

Responding takes “at least an hour a day”, she said.<\/p>\n

Without explaining that Scarlett Jewellery is a different business, people would be “taking to social media and complaining about my business unfairly”, Ms Holmes told the BBC.<\/p>\n

She said: “I’ve got to protect the reputation of my genuine business from being mistaken for this awful company.”<\/p>\n

\"ScarlettScarlett Jewels<\/p>\n

Scarlett Jewels purports to be run by a retiring jeweller preparing to “say goodbye” to her workshop<\/p>\n

The Scarlett Jewels website’s small print shows it is run by a company called Denimtex Limited and has an address in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

But the website purports to be run by an older woman who created “one last collection” as she prepared to “say goodbye” to her workshop.<\/p>\n

Professor of digital business management at the University of Sussex, Ana Canhoto, said similar sites were “becoming quite common because it’s so easy to create these images, and so quick, and so inexpensive.”<\/p>\n

Often AI images are “too perfect” and blemish-free, or flawed such as “earrings that really wouldn’t work”, she said, while creating a false impression of scarcity “is a very common scamming technique”.<\/p>\n

The Scarlett Jewels website claims “10,000+ American women have fallen in love with” its items and shows 10 five-star reviews.<\/p>\n

According to Prof Canhoto, the images of women the website claims have left these reviews are generated by AI or taken from other sites.<\/p>\n

Two thirds of reviews left on the Trustpilot page for Scarlett Jewels gave the site one star and some labelled products “tat” or “poor quality”.<\/p>\n

\"LeanneLeanne Rinne\/BBC<\/p>\n

Professor Ana Canhoto said the Scarlett Jewels website’s images were generated by AI or taken from other sites<\/p>\n

Roy Morton, from York, told the BBC he ordered some earrings from the dubious website believing he was ordering from Ms Holmes’ legitimate site.<\/p>\n

The 77-year-old claimed he knew “straight away” the website was a “scam” after he was notified his product was delivered, when it never had been.<\/p>\n

Olga Grychak, who lives in Luxembourg, said she clicked on a Scarlett Jewels advert on Facebook featuring an image of “sophisticatedly crafted earrings”.<\/p>\n

She did not buy anything after noticing the woman on the site was “AI-generated”.<\/p>\n

“I immediately started feeling anxious for all those people who could turn out to be in the same situation as me” and might buy some jewellery, she said.<\/p>\n

\"ScarlettScarlett Jewels<\/p>\n

Items on Scarlett Jewels are offered at heavily discounted rates<\/p>\n

The Advertising Standards Authority said it “already banned several ads like these” and issued a public warning about similar misleading ads in September.<\/p>\n

After being approached by the BBC, Facebook said it had restricted the Scarlett Jewels profile from creating new ads.<\/p>\n

Andrew Laughlin, a principal researcher at consumer guide Which?, said sites like Scarlett Jewels were “a bit like whack-a-mole”.<\/p>\n

He said consumers should look out for slightly off AI images and big discounting as signs of a dubious business, and to try to find genuine customer reviews.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Claudia Sermbezis\/BBC Ms Holmes says she has been receiving “daily phone calls, web chats and emails” from unhappy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-236293","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}