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The Real-Time Deepfake Romance Scams Have Arrived
Tuesday - April 22 - 2024
Watch how smooth-talking scammers known as “Yahoo Boys” use widely available face-swapping tech to carry out elaborate romance scams.
The compliments start flowing as soon as she answers the video call. “Wow, you so pretty, honey,” says the man on the other side of the screen. His video feed shows he’s white, with short hair, likely a few years younger than her, and is sitting in front of his camera wearing a plaid shirt.
It seems as though we’ve arrived at the moment in the AI hype cycle where no idea is too bonkers to launch.
This week’s eyebrow-raising AI project is a new twist on the romantic chatbot—a mobile app called AngryGF, which offers its users the uniquely unpleasant experience of getting yelled at via messages from a fake person. Or, as cofounder Emilia Aviles explained in her original pitch:
“It simulates scenarios where female partners are angry, prompting users to comfort their angry AI partners” through a “gamified approach.” The idea is to teach communication skills by simulating arguments that the user can either win or lose depending on whether they can appease their fuming girlfriend.
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Today’s newsletter :
The Real-Time Deepfake Romance Scams Have Arrived
What If Your AI Girlfriend Hated You?
Salesforce’s silly deal dies, Rubrik’s IPO, and venture capital in space
Women in AI: Anna Korhonen studies the intersection between linguistics and AI
How United Airlines uses AI to make flying the friendly skies a bit easier
Why vector databases are having a moment as the AI hype cycle peaks
Microsoft to forge AI partnerships with South Korean tech leaders
A Wave of AI Tools Is Set to Transform Work Meetings
How One Author Pushed the Limits of AI Copyright
How AI can enhance flexibility, efficiency for customer service centers
Watch how smooth-talking scammers known as “Yahoo Boys” use widely available face-swapping tech to carry out elaborate romance scams.
The compliments start flowing as soon as she answers the video call. “Wow, you so pretty, honey,” says the man on the other side of the screen.
His video feed shows he’s white, with short hair, likely a few years younger than her, and is sitting in front of his camera wearing a plaid shirt.
“You’re looking different with that beard and stuff gone,” the woman says in an American accent as the conversation gets going.
The man doesn’t miss a beat. “I told you I was going to shave my beard so I will look good.”
Except, he isn’t who he claims to be. His videofeed is a lie. And—beard or not—the face the woman can see over the video call is not his: It’s a deepfake.
It seems as though we’ve arrived at the moment in the AI hype cycle where no idea is too bonkers to launch.
This week’s eyebrow-raising AI project is a new twist on the romantic chatbot—a mobile app called AngryGF, which offers its users the uniquely unpleasant experience of getting yelled at via messages from a fake person.
Or, as cofounder Emilia Aviles explained in her original pitch: “It simulates scenarios where female partners are angry, prompting users to comfort their angry AI partners” through a “gamified approach”.
The idea is to teach communication skills by simulating arguments that the user can either win or lose depending on whether they can appease their fuming girlfriend.
It’s going to be a big week! Tech earnings are coming up, the EV wars are on (and how!), and it feels like venture capital has its head in the clouds. All that adds up to one packed Equity episode!
Today, we dug into the latest markets news, including upcoming earnings, IPOs, and what impact — if any — the bitcoin halving has had on the value of the cryptocurrency.
We also had two new venture capital funds to discuss: A new vehicle from Seraphim focused on space, and TLcom Capital’s new Africa-focused fund.
From there, it was time to chat EVs and what impact recent price cuts are having on the value of EV companies.
To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch has been publishing a series of interviews focused on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the AI revolution.
We’re publishing these pieces throughout the year as the AI boom continues, highlighting key work that often goes unrecognized.
In the spotlight today: Anna Korhonen is a professor of natural language processing (NLP) at the University of Cambridge. She’s also a senior research fellow at Churchill College, a fellow at the Association for Computational Linguistics, and a fellow at the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems.
When you board a United Airlines plane, the gate agents, flight attendants and others involved in making sure your plane leaves on time are in a chatroom coordinating a lot of the work that you, as a passenger, will hopefully never notice.
Is there still space for carry-on bags? Did the caterer bring the missing orange juice? Is there a way to seat a family together?
When a flight is delayed, a message with an explanation will arrive by text and in the United app.
Most of the time, that message is generated by AI. Meanwhile, in offices around the world, dispatchers are looking at this real-time data to ensure that the crew can still legally fly the plane without running afoul of FAA regulations. And only a few weeks ago, United turned on its AI customer service chatbot.
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What else is nex?
Why vector databases are having a moment as the AI hype cycle peaks
Vector databases are all the rage, judging by the number of startups entering the space and the investors ponying up for a piece of the pie. The proliferation of large language models (LLMs) and the generative AI (GenAI) movement have created fertile ground for vector database technologies to flourish.
Microsoft to forge AI partnerships with South Korean tech leaders
Microsoft is set to host top executives from South Korea’s leading technology firms next month to strengthen its AI partnerships.
The high-level meeting, dubbed the MS CEO Summit 2024, will be held on 14 May 2024 and feature Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates and Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella.
A Wave of AI Tools Is Set to Transform Work Meetings
Dan Siroker knows how to pivot. He once had an education startup that morphed into a successful online analytics company called Optimizely.
More recently he created an AI company called Scribe.ai, dedicated to capturing data from apps like Zoom, then reintroduced it as a MacOS app called Rewind designed to be “a search engine for your life.”
That wasn’t clicking, so this week he changed the name of the company again to Limitless and introduced a spiffy wearable.
How One Author Pushed the Limits of AI Copyright
Last October, I received an email with a hell of an opening line: “I fired a nuke at the US Copyright Office this morning.”
The message was from Elisa Shupe, a 60-year-old retired US Army veteran who had just filed a copyright registration for a novel she’d recently self-published. She’d used OpenAI's ChatGPT extensively while writing the book.
How AI can enhance flexibility, efficiency for customer service centers
Whenever you call a customer service contact center, the team on the other end of the line typically has three goals: to reduce their response time, solve your problem and do it within the shortest service time possible.
However, resolving your problem might entail a significant time investment, potentially clashing with an overarching business objective to keep service duration to a minimum.
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