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Deep-Fake Flowers: When Plants Are Too Good to Be True
If your social feeds are filled with bizarre, neon-bright plants, welcome to the world of AI-generated nature. But, says our writer, maybe there’s an upside to these unreal gardens.
By: Aliza Gans
If your algorithm is anything like ours, trained on gardening tips and plant lore, you’ve likely been served images so strange and luminous, they stop you mid-scroll: a neon-blue monstera, a rose glowing as if lit from within, a succulent that shimmers in impossible gradients. They look as though the Na’vi from Avatar and the Jolly Green Giant decided to do a collab. The comments are divided between awe and suspicion: “Where can I buy this?” asks one user. “This can’t be real,” says another.
The truth is, these plants don’t exist as shown, at least not in soil. They are AI-generated images, often paired with links to online shops selling seeds that promise the impossible. Botanists and institutions like the National Garden Bureau have already stepped in to clarify that these hyper-saturated, otherworldly plants are digital fabrications, sometimes attached to outright scams. For instance, bearded iris seeds in impossible colors and other fantastical plants may be hawked by companies that send you plain old seeds (or nothing) once you order.
Seeing Beyond the Scam
But to frame this phenomenon purely as a consumer warning may not tell the whole story. This collision of artificial intelligence and flora is not just about deception. It’s also about desire.
We cultivate plants, but never fully control them. AI-generated plants may arise from a familiar tension: our longing to perfect nature and make it even more wonderful on command. AI-assisted cat-face flowers are not just e-commerce trickery. They’re also an expression of what we wish nature could be, or perhaps what we wish we could coax from it.
Plants depicting idealized reality are nothing new. The frescoes of Pompeii are filled with lush botanical scenes that create the illusion of abundance and order, a domesticated Eden in the dining room. Even earlier, the ancient Greek painter Zeuxis was said to have painted grapes so lifelike that birds flew down to peck at them.
The story survives not as a warning about realism gone too far, but as a celebration of illusion, of art’s ability to completely deceive the senses. No one accused Zeuxis of fraud. They marveled at his skill.
Analyzing the Allure of Fake Flowers
Still, it’s worth asking why these images resonate so strongly. Why do people want to believe in these plants? Part of it could be that, as we recognize some kinds of flora are endangered, the idea of a plant that glows, dazzles, and thrives effortlessly feels like hope. Or escapism. Or both.
AI-generated plants invite us into a realm of boundless creativity. A gardener might see a neon-blue leaf and not think, “I want that exact plant,” but “What if I planted more for contrast? For drama? For surprise?” The image becomes a provocation rather than a promise.
Gardeners have long chased novelty through breeding and selection. The inky-purple flesh of a Black Beauty tomato or a rare pink lily of the valley may once have felt just as unreal, sparking that “I need this” urge. Otherworldly (and likely AI-manipulated) butterfly flowers, for example, can jolt us and allow us to imagine nature pushed further than we thought possible. Seen this way, AI may echo the experimental spirit of horticulture itself, inspiring growers to experiment with forms, colors, and cross-pollinations in the real world.
Should We Hate or Elevate AI Plants?
Of course, there is real harm when people are misled by floral fakery, especially when money is involved. But the advent of AI-designed plants may teach us to hold two ideas at once: that we must protect trust and that imagination is not the enemy of nature.
In many ways, AI plants expose our complicated relationship with the living world. We love to see it running wild in all its variations, yet we also strive to tame it and create what’s in our mind’s eye. Nature, stubbornly, refuses to cooperate. It browns, wilts, and dies. It does not glow on command.
That imperfection is the point. The danger isn’t that AI shows us impossible plants. It’s that we forget to appreciate the strange, subtle beauty of the real ones already in front of us. Fang-like roots on a climbing pothos. A spittle bug’s foamy nest on a branch. The daylily flower that blooms for only a day.
The silver lining of these digital flora fraudsters may be that they remind us how deeply we yearn for enchantment. We can recognize these AI images for what they are — and then step outside, get our hands dirty, plant something real, and hope it grows.
About the Writer
Aliza Gans is a writer, artist, and plant lover living in Brooklyn. She can be found ambling through the Brooklyn Botanic Garden with traffic-canceling headphones, or block printing for her brand, Gansa.