AI-generated images are getting harder and harder to spot every day. I can’t tell you how many times my mom has sent me a photo of a cute animal shared to Facebook, only for me to have to break the news to her that it was made from AI. Thankfully, AI isn’t nearly good enough to create AI-generated images of cars without hawk-eyed enthusiasts being able to immediately spot them.
That’s why The Autopian crew was shocked to see Dodge’s and Ram’s official Instagram channels share a trio of images on Friday featuring a handful of Dodge cars and Ram trucks that looked to be either partially or fully generated by AI. Some of the cars have small inaccuracies, like incorrect wheels, while others have totally wrong fascias.
This is obviously a terrible look for whoever’s running the Dodge and Ram accounts, who definitely should’ve caught this before it went live. If any account should be publishing accurate historical photos of past Dodge and Ram models, it’s the manufacturer itself.
Despite the dozens upon dozens of comments calling Dodge out on the obvious use of AI, the slideshow still hasn’t been deleted from the page as of this writing. Here it is:
View this post on Instagram
In case you can’t see the above, I’ve screenshotted every image, which you can see below. Here’s the lead photo, which features a Neon with a fascia I’ve never seen before alongside a third-generation Ram 1500 with some flame graphics and an elongated cab that never came from the factory:
The second image shows a first-generation Dodge Viper with four-spoke wheels instead of the iconic tri-spokes, next to a Dodge Dakota that actually looks pretty true to the real thing. There’s also an image of a different Dakota, as well as the original Dodge Viper VM-02 concept from 1989, embedded into the fog of the upper portion of the image.
The last image shows a first-generation Ram behind a Dodge Shadow convertible that looks like it’s had its face smushed down by an inch or two.
These images, almost instantly, whipped up a frenzy in the comments section. Most people simply called out the use of AI “slop,” while other wondered why Dodge would resort to using AI when it has a huge collection of press photos in its archives.
Here is just a small selection of the comments currently under the post:
Curious to know how the hell these images made it live, The Autopian reached out to Dodge directly via email. Here’s what a spokesperson told us:
“Yes, the two vehicles in the shared image are from product correct photography, but the AI-generated background unfortunately distorted some vehicle features. We appreciate the quick feedback. Details matter, and we’ll do better.”
Okay, a couple of things. First, I hope they meant images, and not just the first image, because all three have at least one car with some sort of distorted or incorrect aspect. And second, I can sort of see why Dodge might’ve wanted to use AI to spruce up old press images for a fun Friday-afternoon throwback post. But it’s one thing to upscale photos, and another thing to have AI mess up those photos, and yet another thing to publish those images to your combined nine million followers.
Going by that comment, it sounds like whoever made these images fed original stock photos into a generative AI program, which spit out what you see above. Going through parent company Stellantis’s archives, I managed to locate some images that look somewhat similar. Let’s see if I can spot all the differences.
For the Neon and third-gen Ram, there are some pretty obvious callouts here. The Neon’s face is, of course, all wrong. No version of the Neon came with lights shaped like that—if I had to guess, the generative AI melded the Neon’s lights with the lights from something like a Chrysler 300M, and that’s what came out. The grille is also incorrect, with a lot more slats and cutouts than it should have.
The Ram 1500 is a bit more correct, but there is one glaring error: Dodge never made a third-gen 1500 with an extended regular cab like the one shown above. You could get a regular cab, with no extra space behind the seats, a quad cab with four doors, or the legendary mega cab, which stretched the rear area for more legroom. It seems like the AI added the extended portion of the body found on the mega cab to this two-door Ram, making the Frankenstein cab you see above.
As for the second image, the only glaring mistakes I see are with the Viper’s too-thin windshield surround and extra wheel spokes. The rest of the car looks pretty accurate, and the Dakota to its left seems fairly spot-on.
As for the two cars floating above in the ether, both look to be real images that haven’t been modified much (or at all). Here’s the original link to the Dakota picture, and the link to the VM-02 photo.
In the final photo, the first-generation Ram truck looks to be pretty accurate, but the Shadow is anything but. The general shape is the same, but the real Shadow’s nose doesn’t slope down nearly as severely as the AI image depicts. It’s far more blocky in real life.
To me, the weirdest part about all this is that even after the comments erupted, Dodge and Ram still haven’t deleted the slideshow from Instagram, even five days later. Showing off products that neither brand ever produced is incredibly strange, and it doesn’t sound like some rogue marketing agency posted these photos under Dodge’s nose—the company answered our inquiry about it and admitted it made a mistake using AI. So the brand is fully aware it’s hosting AI-slop versions of its cars on its pages.
At this point, it might be better to leave up the slideshow as a reminder to social media managers worldwide that you should take caution before using AI to modify images of your product. You could also make the argument that all engagement is good engagement—this slideshow has generated nearly 600 comments so far, which is way more than any Dodge or Ram post usually gets. Whether it was worth making a bunch of fans angry, though, is anyone’s guess.
Top graphic image: Dodge / Ram; DepositPhotos.com
If you are following Dodge/Ram/Stellantis on IG, you get what you deserve. These are are corporations, not your friends.
It sends the signal that the company just dont care anymore. Only cutting corners. It begs the question; why should anyone else care??
Hey, my IG comment got highlighted. Heck yeah. I still fail to understand why *someone* at the company didn’t catch this.
I hope the AI slop Youtube videos don’t feed on these.
I was thinking of past Dodge slogans like “Dodge. Different.” and reminded of the taglines they put on their late 90s brochures:
Caravan: We thought of everything. (negative)
Stratus: We questioned everything. (apparently not)
Avenger: We looked beyond looks. (hmm)
Dakota: We’re full of surprises. (boy howdy)
Intrepid: We’re changing everything. Again. (well yes)
Neon: We’re making everything fun. (ok they kinda did)
Side Note: I know the old Shadow was a total sh*tbox, I had a couple friends with various versions and they were all creaky, cheap plastic, rattlecans, but hate to admit I still think they were a good looking little cars, especially in the ‘sportier’ (I use that term very loosely) versions.
And the little Turbo ones would absolutely rip. Total fun boxes.
That last photo has such fake looking sand it makes the whole image look like it is a kid’s toy fill diorama.
I thought they were supposed to be in an aquarium at first. They really should have added fish.
Looks like they rammed some prompts into Gemini while they dodged their Adobe subscription bills. Their marketing department must be a shadow of it’s former self with a den of vipers for a C-Suite.
To be fair, I wish they’d turned the C-suite at Stellantis over to a den of (Dodge) Vipers.
Apparently the person who ticketed an Eagle Talon in the Chrysler parking lot has a new job running their social media.
Ugh, I hate this AI generated slop SO SO much. Everyone is falling for it and soon it will be impossible to decipher what’s real.
I wish I had enough free time to get worked up about mostly correct AI generated retro car ads. But I have kids, a job, a wife and a house. Any free time I find is because work is slow or I’m forgetting to do something at home.
If you have time to read and post on a car enthusiast website, you have time to get outraged at a lame-ass corporation.
I’m far from an expert on Dodge but even I saw the Neon and was like what in the actual F is that?
I mean, they had Plymouth, Dodge and Chrysler Neons, so…why not, retroactively, a Ram Neon?
I kinda dig it.
Hey wait a minute, I like what this AI is cooking. A Regular Cab Mega Cab sounds pretty sweet. Long drive? Just use that extra space to recline all the way back!
Absolutely love watching big companies get roasted on social media. It’s one of life’s simple pleasures and it happens so often that I get to enjoy it at least once a week. They never seem to learn and it will definitely happen again.
I’m sure their embarrassed. … all the way to the bank
A.I.-yi-yi.
Stellantis has new product plan for Chrysler, 100% reliant on AI, wait until you see it! Consists of facelifted van and nothing else.
Also new ad slogan AI generated, “Stellantis, We’re here for the Journey!”.
I told them to make me look like a doctor!
You know, by comparison a four-spoke Viper wheel doesn’t seem so bad…
Duality, Trinity, and Quaternity
For the better part of five years now, I have been pondering an Ocean’s 11 style caper to access the Chrysler Hisorical Archive garage and “borrowing” those VM-02 wheels.
I bet their social media accounts are run by college interns who use AI daily for their school work and don’t really care if it’s accurate or not.
And they have probably never seen any of the cars/trucks in person.
I work in commercial construction industry and we’re pretty sure no one checks the Architects’ Interns’ work before it gets sent out. If you question it, they’ll double down by saying build it per the plans! Ok, fine, I got it in writing now (smiley face emoji).
HaHa, then they have to come back with asbuilts 🙂
“You KNOW I always wanted to pretend to be an architect!”
-George Costanza
I’m going to hire YOU as my latex salesman? … I don’t think so.
We had a college intern last summer who used AI for every single assignment and spent his time on his phone. I was told that everything he worked on was just deleted because none of it was useful. The future of manufacturing is terrifying.
This reads more like a boomer that just discovered AI and thinks no one else will notice the inaccuracies, because they themselves can’t.
Dodge cannot even get their own vehicles right in a picture, so why would you buy one? Fucking AI slop.
The motto for Chrysler/Stellantis should be “Eh, good enough”.
“Stellantis: Good enough, but not really”
So: Dodge’s marketing guys are too lazy to create their own images, too incompetent to supervise the AI and too apathetic to take them down. Business as usual, anything else they can shove a Hemi into?
Back in the day my HS friend drove his mom’s 1980 Toyota Corolla wagon with an anemic I4 that was ironically more of a true “Hemi” design that the engine Chrysler calls a Hemi today.
So yes, you can put a Hemi into pretty much anything.
If Stellantis is upsetting people for poor quality output, then it’s on-brand.
Ding ding ding, we have a winner comment here.
Fuck public generative AI. That’s all.
This is fun! Let’s play spot the difference more often.
AI is now human enough to have dementia.
Next up an MC Escherlike AI recollection of walking to and from school in the snow, uphill both ways.
This may be the first time anyone from Dodge has written those words.
They left off the question mark…
They just forgot.
The sad reality is that no matter if you have engineers like Floyd Allen, designers like Tom Gale, and executives like Bob Lutz, if you let the bean counters get final say because you’re still in penny-pinching mode due to not being far enough removed from the K-car days which saved the company then all the brilliant work of the various teams that worked on the car is going to get watered down.
That final product that makes it out the door can still end up being a hit (Neon, Viper, Ram truck), but it will be because they still have essential details remaining, that survived the de-costing process, and not necessarily because the bean counters got those details right.