Fintech Founder Charged With Fraud After 'AI' Shopping App Found To Be Powered By Humans in the Philippines
- Reference: 0176997703
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/04/11/0018218/fintech-founder-charged-with-fraud-after-ai-shopping-app-found-to-be-powered-by-humans-in-the-philippines
- Source link:
> Founded in 2018, Nate raised over $50 million from investors like Coatue and Forerunner Ventures, most recently raising a $38 million Series A in 2021 led by Renegade Partners. Nate said its app's users could buy from any e-commerce site with a single click, thanks to AI. In reality, however, Nate relied heavily on hundreds of human contractors in a call center in the Philippines to manually complete those purchases, the DOJ's Southern District of New York alleges.
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> Saniger raised millions in venture funding by claiming that Nate was able to transact online "without human intervention," except for edge cases where the AI failed to complete a transaction. But despite Nate acquiring some AI technology and hiring data scientists, its app's actual automation rate was effectively 0%, the DOJ claims.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/10/fintech-founder-charged-with-fraud-after-ai-shopping-app-found-to-be-powered-by-humans-in-the-philippines/
Mechanical Turk (Score:5, Funny)
"People became suspicious when they noticed the AI's actions were unusually accurate and helpful."
(I jest; I didn't actually read anything. Just a guess.)
Re: (Score:2)
if some extra good shopping gurus that know where the best deals coupled with product quality then having an office full of employees analyzing products for the combination of best price & quality might be a good idea, i know the old saying "you get what you pay for" is mostly true but i been burned on amazon a few times so i would use their servicss if i needed to find something not easily found that fit my needs, it is a good idea, just need to he honest and up front about it
and what about Elon musk? (Score:3, Insightful)
Musk faked self-driving to defraud investors, wonder if the Trump Department of Justice will be charging him?
Re: (Score:1)
I have a Model 3 with FSD and it works very well.
Musk is an idiot (Score:1)
But it's dumb as he is he's always been smart enough to make sure he only rips off little old ladies and other pensioners. He's always made a points to make sure that anyone who really matters makes money off his scams and anyone who doesn't is the one who gets soaked.
I think the Twitter thing might not turn out to be like that but that was such an obviously stupid thing to do that only the banks and the saudi's bought into it and it was pretty clear the Saudis bought into it so that they could influenc
Re: (Score:2)
From the article:
> "The DOJ’s indictment says that Nate ran out of money and was forced to sell its assets in January 2023, leaving its investors with “near total” losses"
Don't lose money. That is the rule. If she hadn't lost money (pivot to diaper sales or something), then Elizabeth Holmes would have stayed out of jail.
Re: (Score:2)
> Musk faked self-driving to defraud investors, wonder if the Trump Department of Justice will be charging him?
That depends on whether they will have a falling out. If they do, anything is possible, including Musk getting deported to a certain prison without a conviction first. He is not an US citizen after all ...
He only got in trouble because he scammed the rich (Score:2)
Should've done a crypto rug pull, or insider trading.
could be buying OpenAI at bulk rates (Score:2)
Those guys need customers. These guys need to stop paying slave wages to poor phillipinos impersonating AIs and keep those slave wages for themselves. I think they should just replace their workers with AI, who isn't these days? So a recent article published here is about OpenAI offering preferential rates and services if you cough up $200/month. There, fire those poor people and keep the moolah for yourself. Solved. You're welcome.
So copied anime? (Score:2)
So he watched Trillion Game S1E08 and figured if it works in anime it can work in real life?
I don't see the problem (Score:2)
They claimed "artificial" and that's exactly what they did.
Using the Theranos business model? (Score:2)
Fake it till you make it.
Zero surprise (Score:2)
LLMs cannot reliably do what they are sold as being capable of doing. Some of the things claimed, they cannot do at all or only by accident. Hence it was bound to get faked at some point. The jokes about this have been around for quite a while, no surprise that reality now imitates art.
Re: Must be (Score:2)
Wrong, Biden's or Hunter's.
Re: (Score:2)
I dunno, who was running things in 2018 when this fraud started?
Re: (Score:2)
Putin?
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Xi Jinping?
Re: Must be (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe the individuals that were responsible for this scheme? If you read the *VERY FIRST SENTENCE* of the summary, the persons responsible are named and identified - and none of them are named Biden or Trump.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know about OP, but my comment was more of a joke about current "political" discourse in the USA, which is a bunch of people shouting biased assertions without any evidence. I certainly would blame the individuals responsible rather than some unrelated politicians.
Re: (Score:2)
I think most people got the joke. And the reaction of those that didn't just sharpens the point of the joke.
Re: (Score:1)
Yes, it was obvious.
Some people are just complete dumbasses.
You know honestly I would blame (Score:1)
The Republican party on a lot of this. We've had 40 years of deregulation that allows all sorts of nastiness when it comes to investment. And the other thing is is they've set things up so the really really really rich almost never lose money and almost always get a bailout.
I mean if you and me had that kind of money on the line relative to our incomes you can bet your ass we would have been checking things a lot more thoroughly. But the 1% and the rich assholes did buy into this crap don't have to both
Re: (Score:2)
You are a parody of yourself at this point.