AI-Generated Cybertruck Ancestor Debunked

The metallic, angular lines of a peculiar vehicle recently captivated swathes of the internet, sparking a curious rumor that it was a long-lost ancestor of Elon Musk’s futuristic Cybertruck.

Shared widely across platforms like Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, and X in late May and early June 2025, the striking image purported to show a 1930 Russian or Soviet “Tarantaika,” affectionately nicknamed the “Boneshaker.”

The visual similarities to Tesla’s polarizing electric pickup were uncanny enough to fuel widespread fascination and speculation, proving once again that a compelling narrative, however baseless, can travel at warp speed through our interconnected digital veins.

But like so many tantalizing whispers in the echo chamber of social media, this one dissolved under scrutiny.

The supposed artifact from Soviet industrial history, a vehicle dubbed the “Tarantaika” or “Boneshaker,” is nothing more than a digital phantom, a figment of artificial intelligence’s boundless imagination.

It never rumbled across the vast plains of Russia in the 1930s; instead, it was born in the silicon womb of a generative AI platform, meticulously crafted to mimic a bygone era while subtly winking at the present.

The image’s true genesis can be traced back to a Facebook user named Joshohoho, who openly admitted to creating the picture using Midjourney, one of the leading generative AI tools.

Far from being a historical discovery, the image was initially conceived as a playful exploration of design possibilities.

Joshohoho first unveiled their creation in AI-focused groups like “Crazed AI” and “Cursed AI” on June 24, captioning it as a “Tesla Cybertruck Frontier Edition.”

Days later, it reappeared in the “Midjourney Official” group, rebranded as the “Tesla Cybertruck: Oregon Trail edition.”

The creator’s intent was clear: to blend the radical aesthetic of the Cybertruck with historical or rugged contexts, not to forge a piece of automotive history.

This digital fabrication highlights a peculiar vulnerability in our collective digital literacy.

The Cybertruck, with its stark, unpainted stainless steel exoskeleton and unconventional geometry, has always evoked a sense of something simultaneously futuristic and anachronistic.

It looks like it could have rolled out of a dystopian sci-fi film or, perhaps, a forgotten chapter of early 20th-century industrial design.

This visual ambiguity, coupled with a general unfamiliarity with niche historical vehicles, created the perfect conditions for the AI-generated image to gain traction.

People wanted to believe there was a historical precedent for such a bold design, a secret lineage for Tesla’s most divisive creation.

Yet, a thorough search of historical records and automotive archives, using prominent search engines like Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Google, yields precisely zero evidence of a Russian vehicle named “Tarantaika” in the 1930s or any other era.

The term “Tarantaika” itself, while occasionally used to describe a light, springless Russian cart, certainly does not refer to a sophisticated, enclosed motor vehicle resembling the AI-generated image.

As for “Boneshaker,” while a historical vehicle by that name does exist, it’s a far cry from a Russian car.

The original “Bone-shaker” is a 1869 French bicycle, famously displayed at an exhibition in Moscow in 2011.

The adoption of this name for the supposed Russian car further illustrates the haphazard way in which AI-generated narratives can weave together disparate, half-remembered facts to create a convincing, albeit entirely false, whole.

This incident isn’t an isolated anomaly; it’s a recurring pattern in the age of generative AI.

The same “Tarantaika” image had a previous life, undergoing a similar metamorphosis into another historical deception.

In October 2024, the very same picture circulated with claims that it authentically showed a “fully restored 1875 chuckwagon.”

This chameleon-like quality of AI-generated content—its ability to be repurposed and re-captioned to fit entirely different false narratives—underscores the profound challenge facing internet users and fact-checkers alike.

Each iteration of the lie builds on the previous, leveraging the visual plausibility generated by AI to implant misinformation into the digital consciousness.

The allure of a good story, especially one that connects the dots between the radically new and the surprisingly old, is powerful.

But as AI tools become increasingly sophisticated and accessible, the line between authentic documentation and convincing fabrication blurs further.

This “Tarantaika” hoax serves as a stark reminder of the urgent need for digital literacy, critical thinking, and a healthy skepticism towards any viral image that seems too good, or too perfectly coincidental, to be true.

In a world where machines can conjure history out of pixels, the onus is increasingly on us, the consumers of information, to question, verify, and resist the seductive pull of compelling fictions.

The internet, once hailed as an information superhighway, now often feels more like a digital hall of mirrors, where discerning reality requires constant vigilance.