News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:AI clones teen girl’s voice in $1M kidnapping scam: ‘I’ve... by dmix on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @12:45PM (#35542624)
AI doesn't solve the reputation problem. Just because you can make 1000x more fake news articles doesn't mean anyone will ever see it. Spam is still spam, AI doesn't suddenly make your site rank on Google or get you followers on Twitter or get you upvotes on Reddit.

I'm skeptical content generation was the thing holding back this wave of fake news and scams from ruining the Internet. These doomer posts are always handwavy on the specifics.

And we've seen little evidence of it operating at scale in the past 2yrs since these tools have been unleashed.

Maybe automated niche targeting but that still depends on networks with reputation systems + spam detection... So mostly depends on ostensibly solvable tech problems like caller ID spoofing, or someone sending mass email spoofed campaigns.

Re:AI clones teen girl’s voice in $1M kidnapping scam: ‘I’ve... by jacquesm on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @01:16PM (#35543212)
You can easily apply AI to the generation of fake accounts used to amplify the message, this is a tried and true playbook that can now be enacted at lower cost and with much greater speed.

That you have seen little evidence of it doesn't mean that it isn't happening, it could also mean that (1) you're looking in the wrong places, (2) that it is so good that you don't detect it and probably other explanations besides those.

Re:AI clones teen girl’s voice in $1M kidnapping scam: ‘I’ve... by dmix on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @01:22PM (#35543304)
I'm on HN daily like you are, I'm sure if this was a developing crisis in spam detection and social media we'd be hearing about it constantly. People on HN love a good AI doomer story, it won't be hiding.

Otherwise it's mostly just predictions of widescale disruption which beyond hyper targetted attacks I remain skeptical.

Re:AI clones teen girl’s voice in $1M kidnapping scam: ‘I’ve... by jacquesm on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @01:53PM (#35543840)
Run a couple of hundred comments on HN sequentially sampled from the comments stream through the AI detector and see what pops up. The fraction is rising steadily.
Re:AI clones teen girl’s voice in $1M kidnapping scam: ‘I’ve... by themacguffinman on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @01:54PM (#35543857)
People complain about it on HN a lot, although "hearing about it constantly" is a fairly vague and nebulous criteria.

Search "gmail spam" on hn.algolia.com with a "past year" time filter, here's a bunch of the most popular titles:

- Bypassing Gmail's spam filters with ChatGPT

- Ask HN: What's happening with Gmail spam filtering?

- Tell HN: Gmail's spam filters have gone bonkers

- Gmail spam is out of control

- Ask HN: Gmail having spam problems for anybody else?

- Ask HN: Have you noticed an increase of spam evading Gmail's filters recently?

- Ask HN: Has Gmail's spam filter been defeated by this type of spam lately?

Maybe it's not relentlessly posted every week but a lot of people are certainly noticing it on HN.

Re:AI clones teen girl’s voice in $1M kidnapping scam: ‘I’ve... by pixl97 on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @02:07PM (#35544099)
>AI doesn't solve the reputation problem

I disagree...

I create 'fake news' message among a series of bots and have a strong network there of social media accounts and sites. Ok, that's step one.

Now, I hack your account and steal your reputation. It appears you approve this message and some subset of your followers follow the bots and go to the bot sites.

You can try to pull out and say your hacked, and some percentage of people will unfollow said bots, but at the same time, a subset of those followers are now following those bots and giving them thumbs up thereby getting access to your friends friends.

User accounts are easily hackable as we saw with Linus Tech Tips recently. Reputation is just the newest currency worth stealing.