This barndominium does not exist

The tale of a low-effort Facebook engagement bait farm

I think I’ve finally found an AI-generated house that feels just right

Prior to a week or so ago, I had never encountered the term “barndominium” (a portmanteau of “barn” and “condominium”, which describes a barn-like structure used as a residence). Upon logging into a dummy Facebook account for the first time in a few months, however, I was greeted by a large volume of suggested posts from an account with the name “Barndominium Gallery”, each of which featured an AI-generated image of an alleged barndominium. Despite the fact that the buildings depicted are not real, many of these posts rack up significant engagement, and although some commenters question the authenticity of the images, many seem to believe that they are looking at genuine photographs of actual houses.

evidently, fake houses make excellent engagement bait

As of February 29th, 2024, the “Barndominium Gallery” Facebook account has accrued roughly 193,000 followers. Almost all of the content posted by the account is AI-generated images of houses, with the exception of a series of posts on January 20th, 2024 featuring photographs of a walkthrough of a real house, and some older content related to a hair salon in Oklahoma. (We’ll revisit the latter aspect shortly.) The artificially generated houses tend to be visually similar to one another, suggesting that similar or identical prompts were used to produce the images.

I can’t stop looking at this diffusion model output

The AI-generated dwellings are accompanied by generic titles such as “I can’t stop looking at this simple barndominium style” or “I think I’ve finally found a barndo that feels just right”. The titles are generally followed by emoji and are repeated verbatim on multiple posts. These posts frequently rack up thousands of likes and hundreds or thousands of supportive comments, most of which appear to be from people who are under the impression that the images are authentic.

who doesn’t have a fire burning on their living room floor these days?

Although some of the artificially-generated barndominiums look convincing at first glance, the images contain artifacts that reveal their synthetic origin. Multiple images contain unrealistic or unsafe uses of fire; in one instance, there appears to be a fire burning on the floor of the house just behind the front doors, and in another case the front entrance has been replaced with a fireplace. House numbers and other forms of text are jumbled and incomprehensible, and several of the images contain physically impossible tree branches.

providing personal information of any kind in response to viral social media posts is never a wise choice

In the comment sections of roughly half of the “Barndominium Gallery” posts, the account operator solicits information on what state users are seeing the post from. For better or worse (mostly worse), some of the account’s fans eagerly cooperate with this request and provide their state of residence, and sometimes include more specific locations and other personal information. (Do not do this!) There are a variety of possible explanations for these requests, none of which are likely to benefit the users who are providing location information to the “Barndominium Gallery” account. The most obvious possibility is for use in targeted advertising, but it could also be an attempt to gather personal information for purposes of identity theft or account takeover.

unsurprisingly, the “Barndominium Gallery” is a hacked and renamed account

Speaking of account takeovers, it turns out that the “Barndominium Gallery” account itself is hijacked. Up until January 19th, 2024, it appears to have belonged to a hair salon in Oklahoma; a post from the following day from the owner of the business in question confirms the hack and requests that people report the page to Facebook. Unfortunately, Facebook has thus far failed to take any sort of action, and 40 days later the person or persons who stole the account have racked up 189,000 additional followers by posting AI-generated dreck. The fact that the “Barndominium Gallery” account itself was hacked suggests that the account’s requests for its followers’ location information are part of an attempt to gain personal information to aid in future hacks.