Deepfake Watch 15 (copy 02)

Is AI Infected By “Pronoun Illness''? | Deepfake Watch

May 17, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

Browser View | May 17, 2024 | Subscribe

Ola Cabs co-founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal is in distress, since he recently dodged an assault by a ‘woke AI’. But are AIs really that woke?

Earlier this year, an unnamed company fell victim to a $25 million deepfake scam. Now we know who it was.

Facebook ads are filled with deepfake scams, with celebrities and public figures being deepfaked to promote sham diabetes cures.

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Did the ‘Woke Virus’ get our beloved AI too?

One day, a pensive Bhavish Aggarwal asked LinkedIn AI, “Who is Bhavish Aggarwal?”

The machine ended up using the singular “they” pronoun for him. The response jolted Bhavish into a tirade on LinkedIn, which the social media platform took down for presenting “unsafe views”.

That was the breaking point. Unable to bear this imposition of Western values, as Bhavish termed it, he announced that Ola will be cutting ties with Azure, owned by Microsoft - which also owns LinkedIn.

The ‘pronoun illness’ Bhavesh referred to is a progressive movement that lets a person decide their own pronouns - along with the decision to choose a singular ‘they’, if their preferred identity is gender neutral, or non-binary. The symptoms of this illness are inclusivity and respect.

But are these Western AIs really ‘woke’?

Decode’s Hera Rizwan tested out several AI chatbots, including Ola’s very own Krutrim, and found that there is no such trend to deliberately assign someone’s pronoun as ‘they’.

But she did find one trend - the chatbots used ‘they’ for made-up personalities with gender neutral names. When prompted with names of known individuals, or gendered names, the chatbots used ‘he’ or ‘she’. Even Krutrim used ‘they’ for gender neutral names, or avoided using pronouns all together. Seems like Bhavish’s fears were unfounded.

After severing ties with Microsoft’s Azure, Bhavish quickly announced that Ola will be switching servers from Azure to Ola’s very own recently-launched Krutrim cloud. Was this tirade a PR stunt? You can try asking Krutrim.

The $25 million deepfake scam

Earlier this year, there were news reports of a Hong Kong employee of an unnamed company being duped into transferring $25 million to fraudsters in a deepfake video conference call.

“Police received a report from a staff member of a company on 29 January that her company was deceived of some HK$200m after she received video conference calls from someone posing as senior officers of the company requesting to transfer money to designated bank accounts,” a Hong Kong police officer had told the media.

The whole incident was shrouded in mystery, with no indication as to who the company was.

British engineering giant Arup has now confirmed that it was the target of the first-of-its-kind scam.

“Unfortunately, we can’t go into details at this stage as the incident is still the subject of an ongoing investigation. However, we can confirm that fake voices and images were used,” a company spokesperson told CNN.

Facebook’s Deepfake Scam Problem

Much has been written about the rise of deepfake scams being promoted on Facebook ads.

A recent report by BOOM’s Shefali Srivastava found that several celebrities and public figures have been deepfaked into selling sham diabetes medication.

The report revealed that original videos of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, BJP MP Hema Malini, Akshay Kumar, and Sudhir Chaudhary were cropped and overlaid with an AI-generated voice clones to make the false claims.

Similar deepfakes of President Draupadi Murmu and journalists Ravish Kumar, Arnab Goswami, and Anjana Om Kashyap promoting this cure have also been fact-checked by BOOM.

Meta said it is currently “investigating the matter”.

Other updates on deepfakes

Have you been a victim of AI?

Have you been scammed by AI-generated videos or audio clips? Did you spot AI-generated nudes of yourself on the internet?

Decode is trying to document cases of abuse of AI, and would like to hear from you. If you are willing to share your experience, do reach out to us at [email protected]. Your privacy is important to us, and we shall preserve your anonymity.

About Decode and Deepfake Watch

Deepfake Watch is an initiative by Decode, dedicated to keeping you abreast of the latest developments in AI and its potential for misuse. Our goal is to foster an informed community capable of challenging digital deceptions and advocating for a transparent digital environment.

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