A man from Southern California, Andrew Garcia, used artificial intelligence to locate his stolen Lamborghini Huracán over 1,000 miles away in Denver, Colorado. Garcia, a resident of Orange County, located his stolen luxury car two years after it vanished in a massive car theft ring based in Riverside County. His vehicle was among nearly two dozen high-end cars reportedly stolen in the summer of 2023. The cars had been rented but never returned; instead, the thieves allegedly erased the original owners from the titles and illegally sold the vehicles.
While several other victims of the theft ring were able to recover their vehicles, Garcia’s Lamborghini remained missing until he received an unexpected Instagram message.
"It said 'Did you sell this car?' And I thought, that's random!" Garcia told local San Diego news station CBS 8. The sender had apparently found Garcia’s business card inside the car and reached out, assuming he might be a source for more luxury vehicles.
The message came with photos of the missing Huracán, which Garcia used to kickstart the search for his car. Relying on tools like ChatGPT and Google, he analyzed the images to help narrow down the car’s location.
"I figured, let's use ChatGPT, let's see how strong this thing is, use Google, the actual Google app that pinpoints, give you the longitude and latitude of different locations," Garcia said.
He prompted the AI with a specific instruction: “Don’t focus on the Lamborghini, focus on the vehicle in the background that’s blurred." The background clues helped him identify the location of his luxury supercar as Denver, Colorado. After pinpointing the location, Garcia alerted Colorado authorities who were able to locate and retrieve the vehicle.
“It was surreal,” he explained, “using technology that’s available to anyone to track down the car.”
The investigation into who had stolen Garcia’s vehicle is still underway in Colorado. Meanwhile, in California, two suspects tied to the original theft ring are now facing legal action.