Have you recently made a new online friend with someone resembling Taylor Swift? It’s more than likely you’ve been catfished. Fortunately, thanks to dating app Bumble, that’s going to happen a lot less often.
The rise in AI means that it’s easier than ever to be duped by social media scams. Luckily, AI is being positively employed to help prevent it.
In fact, Bumble — the second most popular dating app in the US — is rolling out a new “Fake Profile” option on its platform to safeguard its members, allowing users to flag accounts they believe are AI-generated and being used in bad faith.
Bumble Gets Busy Eliminating Fake Profiles
Risa Stein, Bumble’s vice president of product, is serious about rooting out fake profiles, according to the new report. With the tools to create AI content increasingly accessible and sophisticated, bad actors are taking advantage of the technology to create fake images and video content to scam and deceive social media users. And Bumble continues to make strides in combating this growing trend.
Stein recognizes that fake profiles undermine subscribers to sites like Bumble who are looking to make life-affirming, genuine connections.
🔎 Want to browse the web privately? 🌎 Or appear as if you're in another country?
Get a huge 86% off Surfshark with this special tech.co offer.
“An essential part of creating a space to build meaningful connections is removing any element that is misleading or dangerous. By introducing this new reporting option, we can better understand how bad actors and fake profiles are using AI disingenuously, so our community feels confident in making connections.” – Risa Stein, vice president of product at Bumble to TechCrunch
To facilitate this, Bumble has implemented the “Fake Profile” option. The feature allows the app’s users to raise the alarm on accounts with suspected AI generated content, thereby helping to reduce the number of fraudulent encounters online.
How to Take the Sting Out of Bumble
Reporting a suspicious account is easy to do. Users should simply:
- Choose the “Fake profile” option.
- Select “Using AI-generated photos of videos.”
That’s just the latest of many Bumble features helping safeguard users. The platform also allows its digital citizens to blow the whistle on:
- Scams
- Inappropriate content.
- Underage users
- Microaggressions
- The use of someone else’s photos
Meanwhile, Bumble’s “Deception Detector” made huge strides in combating “fake profiles, spammers and scammers.” Released earlier this year, it’s led to a hefty decrease in members reporting such cases by an impressive 45%.
Picture Imperfect?
Does the person you’ve matched seem a little too picture perfect? If something about their social media account seems a little off – e.g., they bear an uncanny resemblance to Brad Pitt – it might be worth checking certain indicators to see if they might be a potentially fraudulent, AI-generated imposter.
For one thing, AI generated images can produce odd lighting effects and shadows that don’t align with the sitter’s immediate environment. There’s also the effect of fake, AI images appearing “hyper real,” or more real and vivid than your typical photo.
Another tell-tale sign? The disfigurement of bodily features like ears, arms, and hands. AI hasn’t quite got the knack of replicating them yet, and so they’re often rendered as a fleshy, nightmarish blur, or contorted in a way that you very rarely see in the real world. The grain of an AI image can also be a dead giveaway. On comparison with a real photo, it will look markedly different.
Used in the right way, however, AI can be an assistive tool. For those requiring professional looking headshots without the extortionate price tag, there are heaps of free and low-cost options to achieve the required effect – and without the need to falsify or deceive.
