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Amazon’s Fake Plants: The Shocking Rise of AI-Generated Seed Scams · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello there and welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
• 0:06
  I am your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, the founder of Utrema Ltd.
• 0:10
  And today I wanted to talk about something bad that's happening in the world
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  of horticulture and it's to do with Amazon.
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  And they've sort of, in their bid to ever increase their profits,
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  They're allowing sellers onto their platform that wouldn't otherwise have been allowed in the past.
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  Now, we don't work with Amazon for a number of different reasons,
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  mainly because we don't want to be Jeff Bezos' B-I-T-C-H.
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  And but this issue
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  is not to do with that this issue is to do with sellers selling
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  fake plant seeds and fake plants on
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  amazon and i was alerted to this by my father who
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  should have known better he sent me a picture of a
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  hosta hostas are an ornamental foliage
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  plant they're herbaceous perennial and meaning a day back in the winter loved
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  by gardeners in the uk and also slugs and snails but he's these hostas that
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  are on amazon are almost fluorescent blue they look like papillion.
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  Butterflies from the amazon rainforest that sort of really really luscious delphinium
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  blue there's also a rainbow version i've seen here one that's all different
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  colors of the rainbow in a big circle rosette the stripy ones that look like
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  they're from the tropical rainforest,
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  if you just put blue hoster into amazon you'll find
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  these and many other fake plants and this
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  used to be the problem with ebay
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  because ebay have always allowed people to sell fake plants
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  on their platform and they might take them off if there's a complaint but most
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  people don't complain you know the sort of the ones that you know gourds that
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  look like a big pair of women's boobies and things like this and all sorts of
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  crazy plants and fake images.
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  And with AI, obviously the ability to produce a fake plant image has increased.
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  It's not just a case of someone who can use Photoshop, it's literally someone
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  who can just write what they want in the.
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  Started to allow this. And it used to be eBay, you know, it always used to say,
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  don't buy your seeds off eBay unless it was a trusted seller.
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  And now eBay is allowing it.
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  And these are not insignificant amounts of sums of money that people are being
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  conned out of their bank balance.
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  You know, there are varieties of hosta, like blue mouse ears,
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  that they have like a blue tinge to a
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  very green leaf these are not bright blue plants and
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  it's not restricted to ornamental plants there's there'll be
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  loads of plants edible plants
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  and hydroponic crops and
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  things like this that will be on amazon that cause this issue just
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  look at the names of the sellers we've got the guangzhou chinseng
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  trading company limited so from guangzhou
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  guangzhou is canton isn't
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  it used to be called canton so just north of
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  hong kong and the d yang hi
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  li long jian zi jian zu lao wu yo zi and so yeah again i'm guessing that is
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  another mainland chinese company that is drop shipping fake hostas into the uk so.
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  You can't get blue hosters. You
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  can't even get genetically modified blue hosters. These are fake images.
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  And be wary, the fakeness has entered Amazon as Jeff tries and tries to increase
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  his profits for his shareholders every year.
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  Used to be the just on eBay, now it's on Amazon.
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  Okay, that's been today's Hydroponics podcast.
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  Don't buy your seeds on Amazon if you want to make sure they're not fake you
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  can if you the good way of doing it is checking the name of the,
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  nursery and then seeing if they've got
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  a a website in your country or a
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  or an actual physical store however i've
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  bought chili seeds off amazon this year
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  and that was from a reputable or supposedly reputable nursery
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  here in the uk i bought big black mamas if
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  you remember that and the one plant grew really fast and i was like oh yeah
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  this is the this is the selection this is the phenotype this is the one i want
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  to take forward into following years and then it produced bright red fruits
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  and it was completely unlike the big black mama which sort of looks like a,
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  carolina reaper but black or dark brown so about.
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  8 out of 10 were black, black, big black members, and 2 out of 10 were these
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  red ones, red scorpions, something like that.
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  Now, that wasn't fakery. They apologised, and they weren't trying to trick anyone there.
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  That was just a F up in their nursery, in their production facilities,
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  making sure their seeds were separated.
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  They weren't selling fake plants, which these Chinese companies are doing on
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  Amazon. All right, that's Hydroponics Daily for today.
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  Avoid Amazon fake products. if you've liked
• 5:26
  this episode please give it a rated review on apple
• 5:29
  podcasts because that would help share it with the wider horticultural community
• 5:32
  if you're not on apple just give us a follow that
• 5:35
  would help and check out utreema.co.uk it's latin for wasabi it's my company
• 5:40
  and we manufacture really unique or completely unique fertilizers biostimulants
• 5:44
  and biopesticides for hydroponics horticulture in general and even agriculture
• 5:50
  all right i'll see you again tomorrow goodbye.