The AI Tinder Swindler is here đź’”

Author

Calin Drimbau
March 09, 2023

london

When I moved to London 10 years ago, I was surprised by how often people talk about the weather. It was snowing yesterday, so I couldn’t help myself starting every single call with a remark about the weather. I bet everyone in LA is also talking about the weather.

Just like the weather, the AI-powered future we’re all going to live in is difficult to predict. Today we’re looking at the future of scams, human-machine interaction, and a world where AR meets AI.

What do we have for you today?

🪪 Impersonation scams are on the rise and they’re fueled by GenAI developments. The age of AI swindling has begun

🧑 Putting a face and a voice on top of chatGPT. Are we reconstructing humans from the mind up?

🪄 What happens when AR meets AI? A future where AI helps us fix cars, live count calories or figure out what bus to take without looking at the phone

GenAI is fueling the next generation of scammers

tinder

How much do your grandparents love you? Would they help you with money if you were in trouble? If they received a phone call from you saying you were in jail and needed money for bail, would they send the money over?

Brandon’s grandparents went through this. A phone call from their grandson sent them rushing to the bank to withdraw money and send it to their distressed grandson. Except it wasn’t really their grandson asking for money but scammers using voice cloning technology to impersonate him.

With today’s technology. you can clone a voice with 30 seconds of audio content from Tiktok. Impostor scams are one of the fastest-growing crimes in the US.

With voice cloning and deep fake videos, genAI is fueling the next generation of scammers - this time, at scale! And with models being open-sourced or leaked on torrents (yes, Meta’s LLaMA’s are loose), everyone has access to the newest and latest. The next Tinder Swindler will be even more convincing and efficient. I love you all.

Reconstructing humans from the mind up

brain

What makes us human? Our physical body, our mind, our emotions? Probably all of them, at minimum. If ChatGPT can relate to us by becoming a quasi-rational sparring partner and take into consideration our emotions, does it start resembling a human?

I would argue it doesn’t. But what if we give it a realistic face and a voice? Platforms like Synthesia have been around for a while, but video generation with photorealistic avatars isn't mainstream yet.

Israeli startup D-ID made the news this week, as being the first platform to give chatGPT a photorealistic face and a voice. The startup’s CEO, Gil Perry makes an argument for accessibility. Not everyone can read or write and this technology will bring chatGPT to new audiences, such as the elderly.

So, we have a brain, a face, and a voice now - all of a sudden AI starts resembling a human. Matt covered humanoid robots in the last edition and perhaps that’s where we’re heading.

The alternative? AI meets AR/XR and all eyes are on secretive startup Humane.

Humane: AR devices or Star Trek communication?

star trek

Humane has been around for a few years. It’s been founded by ex-Apple design and engineering team Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno. They raised $230m to date, with a Series C of $100m led by Kindred Ventures just announced.

What are they up to? Their work has been surrounded by mystery. From a published patent, they seem to be working on a body-worn AR device with a laser-projected display. Imagine information overlaid over real-world objects: maybe you’ll finally be able to fix that car yourself and for the simple folks like me, figure out quickly what program to use when doing laundry.

Blogger John Grubber thinks what they’re building is akin to a Star Trek communication device, with an always-on camera and sensors for world mapping and detecting hand gestures.

Whatever it is, if the device makes it out of the lab, the world as we know it will start to look very different.

Gen AI Deals that make your eyes (and mouth) water đź’°

What caught our eye? đź‘€Unitary uses AI to analyze the context of user-generated videos uploaded to social media platforms. It highlights content that could be harmful to particular users or advertisers, without the need for a human moderator. According to a report, the content moderation market could be worth $32bn by 2031.

New developments to spam your #random Slack channel đź’¬

Things to learn when you need a raise

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Before you go

Let us go back in TIME.

And scene. That’s all for today! I’m packing my bags for New York. Will be reporting from NY for the next editions. Thank you for always reading, sharing, and subscribing. Want to share something with us? Slide in our DMs, they’re open.

— Calin Drimbau (@calindrimbau)