Suspicious account sends legal threats posing as AI-generated fake lawyers
A dubious account, claiming to be a law firm named Commonwealth Legal, has been discovered issuing false legal threats. The scam was unveiled when Ernie Smith, owner of the blog Tedium, received a "copyright infringement notice" from an individual named Will Thomas. Thomas alleged to represent this Arizona-based law firm, and claimed to be acting on behalf of the "Intellectual Property division of a notable entity" in the US.
Unusual copyright infringement notice raises questions
This notice was different from the typical copyright infringement notices that demand the removal of copyrighted content. It requested Tedium to link an allegedly copyrighted image from Unsplash, a royalty-free database, back to a gadget review website known as Tech4Gods. A quick reverse image search linked the faces of these supposed lawyers to generated.photos - a website known for creating AI-generated faces.
AI detection start-up confirms scam suspicions
Ali Shahriyari, co-founder and CTO of AI detection start-up Reality Defender, confirmed that "All of the faces scanned were likely AI-generated, most likely by a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) model." Further investigation revealed that the Phoenix address, claimed by Commonwealth Legal, was a single-story ranch-style structure, contradicting its claim to be located in a fourth-floor office.
Tech4Gods denies involvement in backlink request
When 404 Media contacted Daniel Barczak from Tech4Gods about the backlink request, he denied any involvement and claimed that someone else was sending them without his knowledge or approval. He expressed ignorance about who could be behind such actions and stated he had no idea. Barczak also revealed that his site had recently been targeted with spammy links.
