AI-Generated AI News Site Threatens Facial Recognition Company

An AI-generated news website threatened a facial recognition company to reveal information about its finances.

The facial recognition company, which requested anonymity, supplied the email to IPVM, which was an attempt to gain financial information from the company. The AI-generated news website did not respond to multiple requests for comment over the past 4 days.

This comes amid broader concerns about popular AI tools fueling deception campaigns by making it easier than ever to make up content, people, and even news publications.

In this post, IPVM examines this incident in-depth.

Threatens To Publish "With Or Without Your Response"

On March 12, 2023, a facial recognition company received an email from "Lisa Cohen", describing herself as editor-in-chief of Inside Neural Net, a "leading publication covering the latest developments" in AI.

In the email, Cohen claimed the facial recognition company may have "significant deposits at Silicon Valley Bank" and was having issues paying salaries. Cohen threatened that Inside Neural Net would publish "with or without your response" with a strict same-day deadline, on a Sunday:

However, no article ended up being published by Inside Neural Net. The facial recognition company did not reply.

"Clearly Fabricated To Get Information"

The email immediately appeared suspicious to the facial recognition company as it did not actually have "any substantial funds" in Silicon Valley Bank, it told IPVM. Inside Neural Net's claims seemed "clearly fabricated in order to get information."

No Evidence Editor-in-Chief Exists, Possible Fake

Inside Neural Net's editor-in-chief Lisa Cohen has no LinkedIn profile or bylines in any other publication. Her profile photo is likely a fake AI-generated person, the facial recognition company said, citing "asymmetry of the eyes, eyeglasses, and earlobes, all tell-tale signs":

Lisa Cohen does have a Twitter account but it has only 25 followers, none of whom are journalists or notable industry participants. IPVM also conducted a search via Pimeyes' facial recognition engine and found no matches to the Lisa Cohen image.

Inside Neural Net's other two listed authors, "Max McKinney" and "Naomi Epstein", have no history outside of the publication and do not have LinkedIn or social media accounts; their profile photos are illustrations as well.

The domain name was just registered last month (on "2023-02-16 06:45:46 UTC"), Archive.org has no records of the site before this month and the site itself's oldest dated post is February 1, 2023.

Content "Created Using AI Algorithms"

Inside Neural Net's Terms of Use openly state that "All of the textual and visual material, ranging from articles, blog posts, and product descriptions to photos, illustrations, and graphics, has been created using AI algorithms."

Indeed, some content is AI-generated, e.g. "The Booming Demand for Chief AI Scientists in Tech Firms" appears written by an AI chatbot like OpenAI's ChatGPT, making a number of unsourced and unlikely claims e.g. that "Chief AI Scientists" can "earn up to $50M a year, not including stock options". All article photos are credited to OpenAI's DALL-E:

While Inside Neural Net claims to be "The AI industry leading news website", it has no original content nor record of being cited anywhere that IPVM could find.

Some articles are not AI-generated but re-written press releases, e.g. "Battlecode: MIT’s Unique Programming Competition" is an almost entirely copy-pasted MIT press release but no credit is given to MIT, instead it is credited to INN's Naomi Epstein. "IDEMIA's Facial Recognition Algorithm Ranked Number One by NIST" is a re-written IDEMIA press release attributed to Lisa Cohen.

No Response / Israel Link

Lisa Cohen/Inside Neural Net did not respond to IPVM's requests for comment. If they do, we will update.

Inside Neural Net does not disclose where it is based nor give any phone number to call. The only hint of its location is in its Terms of Use, where it discloses "The laws of the Commonwealth of Jerusalem, Israel applicable therein shall govern":

Cortica Founder Listed

The only verifiably real person featured by Inside Neural Net is Karina Odinaev, who is listed as an "Opinion" contributor for the article "Why The Conventional Deep Learning Model Is Broken". Karina Odinaev is one of the original co-founders of Israeli facial recognition company Corsight and is currently CEO of Cortica Group. (Corsight was originally "Established as a subsidiary of the Cortica Group".)

Karina and Cortica did not respond to IPVM's requests for comment. If they do, we will update.

Corsight CSO: "Never Heard" Of It, Cortica "Contacted" But "Has Not Engaged"

Corsight's Chief Strategy Officer and former CEO, Rob Watts, told IPVM he had "never heard" of Inside Neural Net.

Watts added that Karina told him Cortica had been "contacted" by Inside Neural Net, but "has not engaged".

Showcases AI Risks

Inside Neural Net showcases how easy AI makes it to impersonate traditional news publications and potentially obtain sensitive information. Once private, content generation tools like DALL-E and ChatGPT are now widely used.

If any readers have been contacted by Lisa Cohen/Inside Neural Net and want to share, please contact tips@ipvm.com.