WEBSTER, N.Y. – Here’s an update to a News10NBC Fact Check from earlier this week about hosta seeds for sale online that promised to grow brightly colored variations of the plant. The fact check determined hostas in those colors do not exist but what was unknown was what would happen if the seeds were planted.
Parker Zack of Webster, an avid gardener, saw an ad on Etsy for bright red hostas and was suspicious, but his curiosity got the better of him and he paid $10.50 for a packet of seeds.
“Scrolling through Etsy, and up popped this incredible, fantastical hosta. It was so breathtaking,” Zack said. “I thought, this can’t be possible. It’s gotta be fake. It has to be fake. But I kept thinking, what if it’s not.”
Experts say if you’ve never seen a hosta that looks like the ones in the ads, it’s because they don’t exist. However, there are many ads online advertising hostas of every color imaginable.
“None of them have the vivid colors like you see in these ads and stuff. It’s all fake,” said Bill Hegeman, president of the Genesee Valley Hosta Society.
The photos and video ads were examined by Christopher Schwartz, a research scientist who works in RIT’s Deepfake Detection Project. He’s convinced the ads are AI generated.
“First and foremost, there’s just a lot of unnaturalness in the physics of the video,” Schwartz said. “There’s also some odd physics to the hostas themselves, to the people. If you look closely, some of the images, you’ll see the hands are kind of weird.”
So if these aren’t exotic hosta seeds, what are they? Zack planted the ones he bought and waited to find out.
“They took all summer to grow. They were outside of my driveway in these pots all summer. But finally, they revealed who they were. What they were,” Zack said.
And what were they? Not a colorful hosta. Not even a hosta. What Zack got was something that looks like it’s in the aloe family.
“It was kind of a consolation prize. Okay, at least they’re something legit. But it’s disturbing to think how many people fall for that. And if I could fall for it, knowing what I know botanically, then anybody could fall for it,” Zack said.
News10NBC did message the account on Etsy that was selling the seeds looking for a comment but no one answered the message. When checked today, the listing was taken down with a message saying “This item is unavailable.”
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