The curious case of the Tesla Tiny House spam
No, Elon Musk is not selling tiny houses for a few thousand dollars each
In recent days and weeks, posts about so-called “Tesla Tiny Houses” featuring AI-generated images of the purported houses have circulated with increasing frequency on social media. There is in fact no such product as a “Tesla Tiny House”, but that hasn’t stopped some of the posts in question from going viral, particularly on Facebook. Unsurprisingly, most of the posts are from large generative AI content farm accounts, many of which have been repeatedly renamed.
The “Tesla Tiny House” posts are all extremely similar, consisting of AI-generated images of imaginary hi-tech homes, generally accompanied by a caption mentioning the alleged price of the nonexistent domicile. The prices are often unrealistically low for U.S. homes, even for houses as small as those depicted. The houses in the images are somewhat surreal and resemble structures from science fiction films.
The “Tesla Tiny House” meme is not limited to Facebook; variations on the concept have been popping up with increasing frequency on a variety of platforms, including YouTube and X. The “Tesla Tiny House” X posts resemble their Facebook counterparts and feature many of the same images, but have received comparatively little engagement. The YouTube versions feature the added delight of narration by a mechanical voice, presumably AI-generated.
The “Tesla Tiny House” meme seems to be most prevalent on Facebook, where it is being regularly posted by multiple large content farm accounts with names such as “Knowledge of Technology”, “Military Aviation”, and “Modern Guardian”. As is often the case with accounts of this sort, many have a history of being repeatedly renamed and redecorated to push new types of content. In one case, “Military Aviation”, a previous name of the account is still visible in the URL (https://www.facebook.com/CozyHomes168).
At least some of the accounts posting the “Tesla Tiny House” meme have similarities indicating that they may be operated by the same entity. For instance, the “Knowledge of Technology”, “Modern Guardian”, “Flight Guardian”, and “Military Aviation” Facebook pages all claim to be run from Los Angeles, but have at least one page manager in Cambodia, in addition to posting similar content. A separate set of accounts with UFO-themed names all appear to be operated from Vietnam.
Many of the accounts posting the “Tesla Tiny House” meme also post a variety of other AI-generated images. These images often portray nonexistent technologies such as flying cars and light-speed engines as present-day Tesla products, frequently accompanied by a grinning AI-generated Elon Musk. Some of the accounts serve up other varieties of AI-generated images as well, including perennial favorites such as fake barndominiums and fake cuisine.
