Remember: Reverse image search is very useful
When is a lawyer not a lawyer?
The advent of AI makes it a particularly strange time to be on the internet. In the old days, you could be fairly certain that a photo of a person with a list of professional qualifications represented the person in real life. In 2024, that will be a little more possible. Last year, a scandal broke out involving an AI-generated mug shot and a seemingly non-existent author. sports illustrated brought about major changes to the publication in question. But it turns out that non-existent signatures are just the tip of the iceberg as far as unethical uses of AI are concerned.
In a new investigation for 404 Media, Jason Koebler uncovers a particularly brilliant scam aimed at driving traffic to specific websites. The scheme involves sending a threatening letter to a website owner accusing them of misusing a particular image, and telling them that they can fix it by linking to a (seemingly unrelated) website. As shady as this may sound, your intuition is sound. That was before AI-generated lawyers.
The article focuses on Ernie Smith, whose newsletter Tedium is described as focusing on “long dives towards the end of the long tail.” Smith received an ominous letter from a company called Commonwealth Legal. At the very least, it would have been creepy had Smith not investigated. Then he noticed that some things were wrong. For example, a photo of an office purported to be a law firm did not match a photo of the building at the address.
The lawyers listed there don't exist anywhere online, Kabler points out. And it spawned, in Koebler's words, “a now-defunct website called Generated.Photos” that promised users that reverse image searches could generate photos of people who don't exist.
The whole thing is absurd and more than a little disturbing. In Smith's case, the scammers targeted someone with extensive Internet knowledge. That means Mr. Smith could easily spot the scam. But his experience raises the question of how many others receive such messages and assume they are real.
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