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Using AI generated images to get refunds
- atonse 9mo agoIsn’t this easy to fix over time? Like ok, you issue one refund. But if Amazon sees the same users requesting too many refunds then it is a red flag?
- lm28469 9mo agoI've been rotating a few amazon accounts for a decade to be in almost continuous free prime, they don't give a shit yet
- harvey9 9mo agoThis is a somewhat useful filter for actual consumers but here we are also looking at large scale fraud. The article mentions opponents using rotating IP addresses and high volumes of refund requests to try to overwhelm counter-fraud measures.
- maelito 9mo agoWe absolutely need certified no-AI digital proofs.
- frenzcan 9mo agoThis seems like such a tricky problem. There was a no-ai camera posted here recently which verified the photos were genuinely taken on the device. It was pointed out someone could photograph an ai image via the camera to produce a verified image. Maybe it needs to be similar to SSL certificates where trusted authorities can verify and revoke verification for digital assets.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- stanac 9mo agoI was thinking the same thing. Apple and Google can start (as tech companies) to add signatures to images. As long as private key doesn't leak we are good. And each manufacturer can have different cert issued by higher authority e.g. Google, so it can be revoked when it leaks. They could include digital camera manufacturers (sony, nicon, canon, ...) and define a standard. Signature can be a meta tag based on hash of the image. This would limit authenticity to images taken by official software.
- webstrand 9mo agoYou can still just manipulate the official hardware to produce the image you desire, i.e. record a video that's projected onto a wall. And it'd be fairly easy to do with existing technology too.
- embedding-shape 9mo agoWe absolutely also need full and complete peace on earth and no more wars, but what we need isn't always what is feasible to get in real life. "No-AI proofs" falls into that bucket of "Would be nice to have, but very infeasible to actually create".
- exe34 9mo agoit will be implemented by chips-on-camera, that will tie you to a picture. it will be pushed forward by law enforcement ("think of the children!") and it will be great for profits. not so much for privacy.
- gray_-_wolf 9mo agoOut of curiosity, what stops you from taking a photo of a AI generated picture?
- eru 9mo agoWell, you could make your verified camera do a 3d scan. Then at lest you'd need AI to 3d print a scene or something.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- embedding-shape 9mo agoHow do you securely read this "3D scan" sensor data, being 100% it hasn't been tampered with?
- intended 9mo agoWouldn’t it end up being some form of nuisance proof? Introducing friction to create verification check points or examine and establish the chain of evidence? But that will only matter for highly legal things or important things. Everything else will be too much of a bother to follow information hygiene. It’s like we’ve introduced an information weed, whose only goal is to create content that matches our dopamine receptors. Maybe our instincts will shift to assuming any shiny or eye catching content is fruit of the weed? Designed to attract us?
- orbital-decay 9mo agoOf course. I already imagine an end-to-end hardware DRM pipeline where images can only be modified with the software made by "trusted" certified parties. Mandated by law and tied to your real ID, of course. Analog loophole can be dealt with later, first things first. /s
- konfusinomicon 9mo agoback to the blockchain!
- risyachka 9mo agoAnd again, few will ruin it for all of us.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- websiteapi 9mo agoEventually the concept of refunds will become very rare. In fact, it, along with free shipping were pretty rare before Amazon and Walmart. If you travel and go to some random beach town and buy random item from random street merchant, they won’t give you a refund. Main issue to bridge is ensuring the item is expected as you can’t physically inspect prior to purchase. It’ll be interesting to see how that’s solved. I participate in kickstarter which defacto doesn’t really offer refunds, so maybe it’ll be the same.
- gyomu 9mo ago> Eventually the concept of refunds will become very rare Except where enshrined by law, eg in the EU
- websiteapi 9mo agolaws can change - eventually this scam described in the article will be ubiquitous and unavoidable.
- gray_-_wolf 9mo agoLaws can change, sure, but probably business practices will change first, since it is easier. In EU, you are entitled to money refund for online purchased goods (with some caveats ofc), but the business can (and most do) require you to send the item back first, on your own expense. That reduces the risk of fraud like this.
- websiteapi 9mo agohardly - go read up on eBay scams. it's never been easier to scam people online. all shipping the item do is force the scam buyer to make the defects so, which is why many if not most seller just pay the buyer partially to keep as-is
- immibis 9mo ago
- isoprophlex 9mo agoMaybe the extreme scalability of AI bullshitting will offset the extreme scalability of running large-scale direct-to-consumer oligopolies, and we see some return to local shopping, with all the positive effects on local communities... one can hope
- kaffekaka 9mo agoI want you to be right, but that requires quite a lot of hope.
- eru 9mo agoDivision of labour is a good thing. It's why we are rich today.
- sweezyjeezy 9mo agoThat's a stretch. One can hold the view that division of labour is a useful economical principle, but also that oligopolies represent a dangerous concentration of power.
- eru 9mo agoWhat oligopolies?
- only-one1701 9mo agoWell, it’s either a that, or we took a bunch of resources from all over the world by force. Maybe a bit of both?
- eru 9mo agoWho took resources by force? For comparison, Ireland is amongst the richest places in Europe these days, and they never colonised anyone. They used to be colonised.
- only-one1701 9mo ago
- supriyo-biswas 9mo agoThe way I see it, generative AI has been introducing a lot of distrust into systems that worked "fine" previously, such as rendering homework ineffective in the case of education, making verification difficult for remote interviewing, flooding the internet with low-quality noise (aka slop) that makes it difficult for reputable and researched sources of information to stand out, with all the implications it has for society, the fraudulent returns described here, and the like. Ultimately, it would be a bit ironic if generative AI ends up kneecaping itself, either through regulation (because businesses and governments will be unlikely to tolerate hiring fraud, returns fraud etc. beyond a threshold), or caused things to move into meatspace through on-site interviews, reliance on physical stores, elimination of online courses and others, which is less amenable to its application.
- thunky 9mo ago> rendering homework ineffective Homework isn't any more ineffective imo. The way we educate and grade is. Imagine if people went to school to learn something rather than to "level up". And you earned a job based on what you know, or what you can do, rather than what degree you banked. Then maybe you would want to do the homework. If gen AI helps us flip the current system on it's head that would be a good thing.
- supriyo-biswas 9mo ago> And you earned a job based on what you know, or what you can do, rather than what degree you banked As I see it, companies will want some sort of artifact that tells them that the person has some basic knowledge in their field of study, which would make us come back to the same system that many detest. Otherwise we'll just end up with Samsung Korea's version of the entrance test[1] which is like the SAT but for getting a job, which only a handful of companies can realistically do, and as such there is very little appetite for it in the "West". [1] https://www.graduatesfirst.com/samsung-aptitude-tests https://www.graduatesfirst.com/samsung-aptitude-tests
- thunky 9mo ago
- avereveard 9mo agoevery time I dig in this story is always stories of stories, and all walk backward to maybe one single merchant, which is just his word, with no police trail or court case trail or anything substantial, with news agency work over "examples and reconstruction of what might have happened" and no actual data that could be verified / falsified. is this something anyone has actually seen happen, or is it part of the AI hype cycle?
- websiteapi 9mo agoscamming to get refunds has always been a thing.
- avereveard 9mo agoand that say nothing whether this is actually happening or not, what's your point?
- ACCount37 9mo agoThat "whether this is actually happening or not" is not even a question worth asking. No shit it's happening. Now, on what scale, and should we care?
- avereveard 9mo agois it happening literally is the most important question. people are clamoring for regulations and voiding consumer protections, over something nobody seem to find a independently verifiable source.
- ACCount37 9mo agoLmao no. "The estimated amount of refund fraud" + "off the shelf AI can generate and edit photorealistic images" adds up to "refund fraud with AI generated images" by default. There are enough fraudsters out there that someone will try it, and they're dumb enough that someone will get caught doing it in a hilariously obvious way. It would take a literal divine intervention to prevent that. Now, is there enough AI-generated fraud for anyone to give a flying fuck about it? That's a better question to ask.
- TrackerFF 9mo agoSeems easy enough to fix, by requiring the customer to bring back to purchased item. I mean, that's how it still works in the real world, at least where I live - if I purchase something from the grocery store, which turns out to be spoiled, I'll take the item back and get a refund.
- intended 9mo agoThere is always a Fix to a problem. Fixes for fraud will always impact the majority who don’t use fraudulent techniques. The cost of the Fix is the issue. That’s resources that need to be spent to combat a type of fraud that was impossible at scale 4 years ago.
- KellyCriterion 9mo agoDuring the dotcom-boom, I worked for SME IT shop; Sometimes we asked for refund some stuff and my boss told me: "dont deliver them the original hardware, pick a cheap one from the stock and put it in the box" This worked very often without any questions, so we just could keep the good stuff :-D
- utopiah 9mo agoAh finally some positive use of GenAI! Wait no, still not... /s
- intended 9mo agoGenAI really is underscoring how much of society is about veracity. I’d say the fears and defenses we had in place for speech online, are having their foundations ripped out from under them. Most of the concern used to be about government control, and that more speech would be the way to democratize and expand our agency over our lives. However now, especially with generative AI and LLMs, the primary vector to control the market place of ideas is to overwhelm the market. Reduce the cost to make content, sandblast our receptors, create too many things to spend our collective energy on verifying, and the outcomes are the same as controlling what is thought and discussed.
- ChrisMarshallNY 9mo ago> Plus, even with supposed confirmation from a chatbot, ecommerce platforms won’t necessarily always side with the seller. Amazon is pretty notorious for shipping almost all of the risk onto the seller. I suspect that's the norm, these days, for most platforms.
- grumbel 9mo agoThat's something C2PA[1] might be able to help with, i.e. your phones camera puts a digital signature on the photo confirming that your phone took it. If that doesn't work out due to people photographing an AI image of a display, I would expect custom shop apps to be required to make warranty claims, as they could make use of all the phones sensors and make forging much harder. Either way, I am not sure how big of a problem this is to begin with, since you'd leave quite the paper trail either way. It's not a stunt you can pull off repeatedly without getting caught. [1] https://c2pa.org/ https://c2pa.org/
- mensetmanusman 9mo agoGood idea. It’s a type of image that doesn't need to be modified, so an encoding verification scheme would work.
- mschuster91 9mo agoC2PA only holds up until someone can extract the key material from any cheap-ass sensor.
- bgbntty2 9mo agoAn easy solution - open the package when the delivery person comes or when you pick it up from the delivery office. The delivery person can take a photo and act as a witness. If you take the package from the local delivery office, there are cameras and staff, so I can't just swap a ripe apple for a rotten one. Where I live we don't have the habit of just putting the delivery on the porch for a few reasons. First, it's ridiculous if you think about it - no one signed for it, so how could you mark it as delivered? I don't get the US in that regard. Secondly, most of the houses have fences, so the delivery person can't come to the house even if they wanted to. You're basically required to meet the delivery person.
- gruez 9mo ago>An easy solution - open the package when the delivery person comes That would massively slow down delivery times, especially if the packaging is non-trivial to open/inspect. Not to mention that not everyone works a comfy remote job where they're at the door the entire day.
- bgbntty2 9mo agoI'm at home most of the time, yet I prefer to go to the delivery office to pick up my packages. It's a 5 minute walk, as they're all over the city. Might not work well for big car-first American cities, though. I prefer going to the delivery office because I hate waiting for a delivery person to show up and wondering if I have time to go to the bathroom or not. But I agree that not everything is easy to inspect. Most things seem to be, though. Another issue is not wanting third parties from seeing what you've purchased.
- kodyo 9mo agoThe honor system is a remnant of a high-trust society. Living in a place where you can generally trust your neighbors is neat.
- edouardmenayde 9mo ago[dead]