{"id":1180,"date":"2026-05-30T13:22:58","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T13:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=1180"},"modified":"2026-05-30T13:22:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T13:22:58","slug":"ai-tiktok-shop-blackface-shein-dropshipping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=1180","title":{"rendered":"AI grifters are creating fake Black people to sell Shein junk"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Aliyah, a light-skinned Black woman dressed in country-western gear, is struggling to sell metal buckles she handmade on TikTok. In a video<\/a> for the social media platform from March, she cries to the camera and pleads for views: \u201cEven as a black woman, I have more faith that white women will stay 13 seconds [on this video] to save my belt buckle business,\u201d the onscreen text reads. She wipes a tear off her cheek.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But Aliyah isn\u2019t real, and neither are her supposedly handmade products<\/a> \u2014 she\u2019s one of many AI-generated influencers created to sell mass-produced products via dropshipping on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. Identical belt buckles \u2014 sunflower design, detachable knife inlay, and all \u2014 are sold on the fast-fashion site Shein<\/a>, and for a quarter of the price.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Aliyahsbuckles on TikTok (left), and Amaya\u2019s buckles on TikTok (right)<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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There are some clues to spot to determine that this video is AI-generated. Aliyah\u2019s voice is robotic and emotionless, which doesn\u2019t match the crying face on the screen. In one clip, she is sewing a leather belt where there wouldn\u2019t usually be sewing at all. When she wipes a tear off her face, the stream of liquid below where she wipes also disappears. And lastly, there are dozens of uncannily comparable videos, but with different AI-generated characters, circulating on TikTok. One, a profile for an account called \u201cAliyahsbuckles,\u201d features an identical background, tabletop, and spool of twine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Verge<\/em> found dozens<\/a> of<\/a> accounts<\/a> on<\/a> TikTok<\/a> with<\/a> similar<\/a> narratives<\/a> and a variety of dropshipping products, including belt buckles, mugs shaped like cowboy boots, crochet bags, and cardigans. Some of these videos are labelled as AI-generated. Similar accounts are also active on Instagram and Facebook. Nearly all aspects of the accounts appear to be AI-generated \u2014 from the \u201cperson\u201d in the video to automated responses to comments, which in some cases attempt to mimic African American vernacular \u2014 and experts warn scams like this are growing every day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s massive,\u201d Jeremy Carrasco, a researcher of AI-generated media and director of Riddance.ai<\/a>, an organization that focuses on AI video detection, told The Verge <\/em>of AI-generated videos connected to e-commerce stores. \u201cMost of them aren\u2019t coordinated. Some of them are coordinated. A lot of the time they\u2019ll run a single [AI-generated] actor, or a couple actors will run all sorts of shops,\u201d he explained. Those AI-generated avatars pretend to make the items, go to fairs to display their products, and \u201crespond\u201d to comments through automation. \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing right now are these retail scams where they\u2019ll link to the Shopify websites.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Carrasco estimates his research team is finding up to 100 accounts that attempt to sell products via AI-generated avatars every day. Most of the accounts found by The Verge<\/em> were created in the last two months and contain videos about small businesses owned by marginalized individuals struggling to make a sale; these videos are incredibly similar, with only slight variations in their scripts. While we also found Native American, Hispanic, and white women characters, the most viewed and engaged-with AI-generated characters found by The Verge<\/em> are Black women. Aliyah\u2019s account alone has 40,000 followers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A screenshot from Amaya\u2019s buckles on TikTok<\/figcaption><\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing here is empathy bait,\u201d said Carrasco. \u201cIf there is a popular dropship item that could be sold to some sort of niche community, they will find it and they will try [to use] some personality to do it.\u201d Carrasco explains that these trends are usually random opportunities to make money. \u201cIt\u2019s just an arbitrary opportunity, which is what a lot of AI content out there is \u2014 the platforms don\u2019t really care and people don\u2019t notice.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Aliyah\u2019s most popular video<\/a>, the one described in the introduction of this article, has 814,000 likes, 6.5 million views, and almost 30,000 comments. Some comments identify the content as AI-generated, but many express the desire to help Aliyah\u2019s business, commenting on the video to increase her visibility on the platform.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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India Cater-Campbell was one of those commenters, expressing a desire to buy Aliyah\u2019s belt buckles. \u201cI was trying to be supportive to an independent Black businesswoman,\u201d said Cater-Campbell, an actual Black business owner working on opening a caf\u00e9 in Seattle. \u201c[I felt] solidarity as I am trying to start a business myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Despite a lack of studies on the latest gen AI video models, Carrasco estimates that these videos are \u201crealistic enough to trick\u201d most people. Users of short-form video content platforms have been trained to scroll mindlessly and not look further into the content they\u2019re creating. Ironically, this is what might have saved Cater-Campbell from actually buying a belt buckle: She couldn\u2019t immediately find a store link, so she scrolled away and promptly forgot about Aliyah.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI was trying to be supportive to an independent Black businesswoman.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But people are falling for these scams, and their prominence grows: Two weeks ago, Gizelle Bryant from The Real Housewives of Potomac<\/em> admitted to buying two crocheted bags after seeing a video in which an AI-generated Black boy said he was being bullied by white boys for crocheting. \u201cI was like, I want to help this little Black boy make his goal,\u201d Bryant said on her podcast Reasonably Shady<\/em><\/a>, adding that other celebrities had also been in the comment section. \u201cHow did I get tricked? Viola Davis was on there, too.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The trend is a kind of digital blackface, according to communications researcher Cienna Davis at the University of Pennsylvania. \u201cDigital blackface is a phenomenon where non-Black individuals are able to use the internet and digital technologies to mimic Black cultural expression for personal, economic, or political gain,\u201d Davis explained over a video call. Davis has written previously about digital blackface, pointing to the use of gifs of Black people as well as the impersonation of Black people for political goals<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s rooted in blackface minstrelsy, which is tied to the legacy of slavery,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Based on the idea that Blackness is \u201cinherently exploitable\u201d and \u201cup for grabs,\u201d digital Blackface is used to \u201cextract value from Black bodies in whatever way [non-Black people] see fit,\u201d Davis said. In this case, the videos are mimicking \u201ca recognizable idea of Black struggle,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Even without confirmation that the people behind the videos aren\u2019t Black, Tempest M. Henning, an assistant professor of philosophy at Fisk University, confirms the videos are digital blackface. \u201cBlackface is any kind of caricature-like portrayal of Black people, which can include Black people dressing up in a caricature-like fashion of Black people,\u201d Henning says. She cites historical precedents of Black people occasionally being forced to perform in minstrel shows<\/a> and the more recent example of Zoe Salda\u00f1a darkening her skin tone and wearing prosthetics<\/a> to play the role of Nina Simone in a biopic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There\u2019s an inherent falseness to the Blackness these avatars claim. As Henning explained, \u201cThe names of the avatar are coded Black, like Aliyah or Amaya, but there\u2019s nothing else [that signals authentic Blackness] other than the avatar itself.\u201d That\u2019s only reinforced by the replication of content across racial identities, which, Henning said, results in the flattening of those identities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Verge<\/em> reached out to Aliyahsbuckles, as well as other stores selling similar products, but received no response.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The videos posted on Aliyah\u2019s account are replicated scene by scene across many similar accounts selling dropshipped items, with slight modifications to fit the identity of the character or the item being sold. In one video featuring another Black woman character, Amaya, a white woman mockingly throws coffee on belt buckles being showcased at a fair. A mildly frustrated Amaya \u2014 the emotions are somewhat robotic and never look quite right \u2014 sighs and goes back to the honest work of making her buckles. A similar scene appears in an account called ChubbyKnots<\/a>; this time the avatar is a Black girl and the product is a crocheted butterfly cardigan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Henning said there\u2019s an appeal to virtue signaling in these videos, where the viewer is called to perform kindness or even racial or class solidarity. \u201cIt\u2019s virtue signaling in the sense of \u2018Oh, that white lady did that, but I am not that kind of white lady, so where do I buy this belt buckle?\u2019\u201d Henning said. \u201cIt\u2019s like they\u2019re saying, \u2018I don\u2019t stand with these people.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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However, Henning pointed out the superficiality of race- or class-based support when users are not pausing to research who it is they are supporting in the first place.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s perhaps a larger social outcome of short-form video content and the consumption of slop: Solidarity is often being performed at \u201csurface level,\u201d she explained, rather than through a coherent and multifaceted political lens. \u201cI might be very invested in a Black-owned business, but that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that all Black businesses align with my political views and what I stand for,\u201d Henning said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This appeal to virtue signaling goes beyond the category of race, also drawing on working-class markers and a simulation of people working hard to earn their keep in a failing economy. \u201c[It\u2019s not just] Black struggle because on the other videos, we can observe working class struggle, small-business struggle,\u201d Davis said. \u201cBut it\u2019s obviously using that [narrative] to sell mass-produced goods. It\u2019s not creative at all. It\u2019s really just AI-generated templates and creation of characters that get optimized for consumer identification and investment in the products. It\u2019s broader than \u2018white guilt\u2019 altogether, because it can be used in whatever way feels necessary or feels applicable to the product.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Despite this flattening of racial identity, or maybe because of it, algorithms \u2014 which have been shown to perpetuate conscious and unconscious racial bias from the people who build them<\/a> \u2014 are delivering AI-generated content that fits the interests they\u2019ve inferred for each user, Carrasco said. These interests may include content from specific demographics that AI personas are able to mimic. \u201cIt targets the demographic that [the algorithm] can see,\u201d he said. \u201cUsually a Black woman will see AI-generated Black people on their feed, an Asian person will get AI-generated Asians.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Looking closer at the content, it\u2019s easy to spot inconsistencies and AI tells. We never see more than a few seconds of the character onscreen because AI apps like Seedance 2.0, Midjourney, and OpenAI\u2019s recently discontinued Sora 2 are not able to create clips longer than 15 seconds. When the products are showcased, the lighting is brighter rather than sepia-toned, and the hands holding the buckles are white. The emotions on the characters\u2019 faces don\u2019t quite match the tone of their voices.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But this recognition requires AI media literacy that is not widely available, especially at the scale that these videos are being created and the technology is advancing toward faster automation and more realistic avatars. \u201cPeople who aren\u2019t trained in media literacy or critical media literacy are just going to take it in unquestionably,\u201d Davis said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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