Luke Arrigoni is enthusiastic about AI’s potential to transform storytelling and the way people interact with the world. But he also recognizes the downsides. And he’s using AI to combat one of the biggest.
Arrigoni is the CEO of Loti, a Seattle-based startup that uses AI to detect and identify fake images and videos of its clients, who include public figures such as celebrities, athletes, and politicians. The company then uses a variety of methods to remove that content from the internet on behalf of those clients.
On this episode of the Shift AI Podcast, Arrigoni and host Boaz Ashkenazy discuss the transformative impact of AI on storytelling, the challenges of building an AI startup, the importance of proactive reputation management, and protecting digital identities in an era of deepfakes and deceptive content.
Listen below, and continue reading for highlights, edited for context and clarity. Subscribe to the Shift AI Podcast and hear more episodes at ShiftAIPodcast.com.
Deepfakes in politics: “As far as our company goes, we don’t want to be one side. We’re not trying to go help Democrats or help Republicans. We’re trying to help the electorate decide who they want to go with, not have to be inundated with fake speeches and endorsements. There’s a right order to how you get people to come onto your platform and I think it’s never been clearer when we talk about politics. We have to make sure we balance that message correctly and that everyone feels like Loti is watching out for the elections, not one particular politician.”
Takedowns of unauthorized content: “For a long time, we all used to say, once it’s on the internet, it’s on the internet forever. The idea that ‘delete’ does not exist and that there’s permanent mistakes that are always going to live on the internet, we challenge that idea. If someone uploads a picture of you that does not belong, we’ve proven that we can find it using our technology. We use facial recognition and voice recognition, deepfake detection, auto DMCA, takedown tools. We use our technology to find you, locate you on the internet, and then we issue takedowns, and it’s all automatic.”
Protecting public figures online: “Our major customer profile right now is public figures. It’s someone that’s out in front, whether they are an actor, a musician, a politician or an athlete. Those are categories that right now we’re seeing a lot of demand for, because there’s things that people can put out there that will jeopardize your reputation. I would say that we are representing a few of the highest-paid people in Los Angeles. Definitely talent that you’ve been watching for many years, people that are at the height of their craft that really want to focus on how they can improve their craft without worrying about someone making a deepfake of them.”
Challenges for AI startups: “Anything with AI is not a weekend project. You have all of the normal constraints, the networking, the engineering, the uptime SLAs, that kind of thing. But you have this added thing, which is you have this resource that’s extremely constrained right now, which is compute. Compute is not cheap. If you buy it yourself, it’s not cheap. If you rent it from someone, and even if you have all the money in the world, you are on backorder with Nvidia. And so this has been really fascinating and is exacerbated by the semiconductor shortage over the last few years”
Approach to internal decision making: “I have a really amazing team. It would be impossible for me to do this without them. I know that sounds really trite, but there’s a lot of truth in that. I think, for me, listening to places where I’m wrong, listening to my team around what I need to be doing, and trying to understand their side and their case, has been something that I think has helped guide me to the successes I have had. I don’t need to be right about it, but I need to make the right call.”
What are the two words that you would use to describe the future of work and the future of society?: “Cautious optimism. I think I’m excited to see all the things that are coming out of GenAI. I think it’s going to transform the ways that humans tell stories. The caution comes into how do we metabolize that as a species? How do we ingest that? If I could make any story anywhere at any time, how do we differentiate between what’s real and not?”
Listen to the full episode of Shift AI with Loti CEO Luke Arrigoni here.
https://ift.tt/UMeT28n August 14, 2024 at 02:15PM GeekWire
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