Engadget has long been a target of common SEO scams that claim ownership of images and request a bank of links to specific websites. As many other websites have written, scammers are now leveraging easily accessible AI tools to make fake DMCA takedown notices and threats of legal action more legitimate. I'm showing you.
According to a report by 404 media, the publisher of the website Tedium, received a “copyright infringement notice” via email last week from a law firm called Commonwealth Legal. Similar to previous similar attempts to deceive recipients, the sender said it was contacting the client “in connection with images” related to it. In this case, the sender requested that a “visible and clickable link” to a website called “tech4gods” be added below the allegedly stolen photo.
Tedium was indeed using photos from royalty-free providers, so the publisher researched the demand, found the law firm's website, and upon closer inspection discovered that the image of the lawyer was generated by AI. I noticed that.as 404 media According to the memo, the image of the lawyer had the same vacant eyes often seen in photos created by AI tools. Performing a reverse image search on these photos will return results from websites with the URL “generated.photos”. The website uses artificial intelligence to create “unique and reassuring model photos…from scratch.” The publisher also discovered that the listed address for his law office, which was supposed to be on the fourth floor of the building, showed his one-story building on Google Street View. The owner of tech4gods said he had nothing to do with the scam, but admitted he was buying backlinks for the website.
This is just one example of how bad actors can use AI tools to trick and defraud people. It is likely that such cases will continue to increase, so we need to be even more vigilant. Reverse image search engines are your friend, but they are not foolproof and may not always be helpful. For example, deepfakes have become a big issue in recent years. Because bad actors continue to use deepfakes to create convincing videos and audio, not only to deceive people but also to spread misinformation online.