Every AI-retail headline of the past three years runs in one direction. The platform deploys a model and the seller profits. In Vietnamese ecommerce the arrow has reversed. Buyers are using image generators to fabricate product defects and file refund claims that small sellers have no process to contest.

The mechanics require no particular skill. A customer photographs an intact item, feeds it to a generator and requests a crack or stain. The edited photo arrives at customer service as proof of defect. A Ravelin survey of 6,200 European shoppers found one in four had abused a refund policy; of those who tried, 98% succeeded.

China documented the pattern first. Taobao sellers saw AI-forged refund photos surge during Double 11 last November — mouldy fruit, a rusty toothbrush, a collar torn by a generator rather than by wear. The fraud targets cheap items because disputing a low-value refund costs the seller more than approving it.

Vietnamese sellers carry every structural condition that made Chinese sellers the first documented targets. Nearly 48,000 sellers left Shopee, TikTok Shop, Lazada and Tiki over the past year as platform fees climbed 10 to 15 percent. Margins were thin before AI-forged claims arrived. The remaining sellers can least afford to absorb an uncontested claim.

Platform design compounds the problem. TikTok Shop’s “refund without return” policy across Southeast Asia means a fraudulent buyer never ships the item back. The marketplace removed the one physical check that might catch a forged photo.

No refund policy was written for proof the buyer can fabricate in seconds.

Detection tools exist but they do not scale. Boll & Branch in the US spotted a forged linen photo by requesting a FaceTime call; the buyer vanished. A Vietnamese marketplace of 602,000 sellers cannot route every disputed refund through video. The platforms collecting the commission will have to verify the image — the sellers absorbing the loss cannot.