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One of Poland’s richest entrepreneurs has urged the country’s leading figures to take legal action against Facebook’s parent company Meta over allegations of widespread “deepfake” fraud on the social media company’s platform. I’m looking for it.
Rafał Brzoska, founder and CEO of delivery locker company Impost, is the latest Polish celebrity to be targeted by an artificial intelligence-generated impersonation to take part in a $1.45 billion lawsuit against the technology group. He told the Financial Times that he had identified about 150 people.
Mr Brzoska said the move would be a “follow-up” to a recent injunction secured through Poland’s data protection authority over a fake photo featuring portraits of him and his wife Omenaa Mensah, a TV presenter. It said the aim was to prevent news and images from appearing on Meta’s platform. . Last month, a Warsaw court issued a preliminary ruling in favor of Brzoska’s request for an injunction.
“As a company, we are not against Meta, but we are saying that it is absolutely unacceptable for users of the Meta platform to promote the crimes of criminals and work with criminals to make money.” The elder said. “They (meta) can reduce it to zero if they want, but they are making huge profits from deepfakes.”
Meta is responding to the growing wave of sophisticated and convincing deepfakes on its platform, including blocking ads featuring AI-created images, videos, and audio without the consent of real people. Pressure is mounting to take action.
In June, a US judge authorized Australian mining billionaire Andrew Forrest to sue Mehta over Facebook’s deepfake ads promoting cryptocurrency investments. Others, such as Martin Lewis, founder of UK-based MoneySavingExpert.com, have long complained about false advertising that uses their names and images without their permission.
Meta’s policy prohibits the publication of advertisements that attempt to defraud people of money by deceiving celebrities. The platform announced in October that it was testing the use of facial recognition technology to detect and block what it called “celebrity bait ads” on its platform, whether or not AI was utilized.
Brzoska founded the company in 2006 and has since built InPost into Europe’s largest operator of automated parcel lockers. Impost, which went public in Amsterdam in 2021 with the backing of US private equity firm Advent International, has a market valuation of 8.3 billion euros.
Brzoska said the list of 150 potential co-plaintiffs includes Poland’s former president and prime minister, but she declined to name the specific people she would approach.
He said the goal was to force Meta to stop the spread of deepfake fraud, not to seek financial compensation for past privacy violations.
“I would like to invite all 150 victims in Poland to join my case,” Brzoska said, “and ask for a precedent that would encourage other victims in other countries, especially the European Union, to follow the same path.” ” he said. I think it’s doable. I think it’s very painful for the victims in the United States, but my great hope is that the European Union has regulations. ”
The EU has led the way in online privacy rights through laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation, a landmark law that allows European regulators to impose stiff fines on companies that fail to protect citizens’ data.
“Fraud is a complex threat that targets, deceives and manipulates people in all industries, and fraudsters are constantly adapting to exploit every platform available and evade law enforcement,” Mehta said in a statement. ” he said.
The company added: “We don’t want ads that attempt to deceive or mislead people on our apps. They violate our policies and harm our platform. As such, we We continue to work with our industry peers to take steps to improve detection and enforcement.”
