Tech companies announced a slew of new security and scam-prevention tools this week, in their ongoing efforts to clean up the AI slop — and security risks — their technology helped create. YouTube expanded its deepfake detection technology to politicians and journalists, while Meta is now warning Facebook users about suspicious friend requests and when potential scammers appear to try linking a user’s WhatsApp account to their device.
Meta’s tools are “part of a multilayer defense,” and are not sufficient on their own, Meta’s David Agranovich, director of global threat disruption, told reporters. That’s because scammers are increasingly operating across multiple platforms and using AI to make their accounts more realistic. The nature of cybersecurity means tech companies are largely responding to scams, rather than getting ahead of them. And as AI helps bad actors with ever more sophisticated tactics, tech companies will continue to struggle to put the cat back in the bag.
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AI is the latest gatekeeper between brands and buyers
Companies are now writing ad copy for bots, not people, and those bots are telling consumers what products to buy.
Google’s AI Overviews and OpenAI’s ChatGPT are starting to portray the same brands differently: Google is 44% more likely to skew negative about a given brand than ChatGPT, serving up criticism around lawsuits, product recalls, and news, according to a report by SEO platform BrightEdge. When ChatGPT goes negative, it does so around product reviews and costs.
With fewer humans in the process and AI that can sum up an entire brand’s history into one recommendation, some companies have taken to generating a slew of positive content in an attempt to rank better in AI results. That may help advertisers, but it floods the internet with a kind of product slop that could also dissuade consumers. The rules of advertising are changing, with SEO becoming a thing of the past. It’s likely the new standards will remain in flux as AI gets better and shoppers change their habits.
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