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Polish billionaire seeks support for “deepfake” fraud lawsuit against Meta

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One of Poland's richest entrepreneurs wants influential figures in his country to take legal motion against Facebook parent company Meta over the alleged spread of “deepfake” scams on the social media company's platforms.

Rafał Brzoska, the founder and chief executive of parcel locker company InPost, told the Financial Times that he had identified about 150 outstanding people in Poland who were targets of artificial intelligence-generated identity theft to be able to join a lawsuit against the $1.45 billion to hitch the technology group.

Brzoska said the motion was a “follow-up” to the injunction recently obtained by Polish data protection authorities to forestall fake news and pictures featuring his likeness and that of his wife Omenaa Mensah, a TV presenter , platforms appear at Meta. Last month, a Warsaw court issued a preliminary ruling granting Brzoska's injunctive relief.

“I even have nothing against Meta as an organization, but I say that there isn’t a technique to earn a living along with criminals by promoting their crimes among the many users of a Meta platform,” said the Polish billionaire. “If (Meta) desired to, they may reduce it to zero, but they make a lot money from deepfakes.”

Meta is coming under increasing pressure to counter the rising tide of sophisticated and convincing deepfakes on its platforms, including by blocking ads featuring AI-generated images, videos and audio of real people created without their consent.

In June, a US judge authorized Australian mining billionaire Andrew Forrest to sue Meta over Facebook deepfake ads during which he promoted cryptocurrency investments. Others, like Martin Lewis, founding father of U.K.-based MoneySavingExpert.com, have long complained about fake ads that use their name and image without permission.

Meta's policies prohibit the running of ads that fraudulently use public figures to scam people out of their money. In October, the platform announced that it was testing the usage of facial recognition technology to detect and block so-called “celebrity bait ads” on its platforms, no matter whether AI is used or not.

Meta: “We don’t want ads that aim to scam or mislead people on our apps – they violate our policies and harm our platforms.” © David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Brzoska founded his company in 2006 and has since grown InPost into Europe's largest operator of automated parcel lockers. InPost has a market valuation of 8.3 billion euros after the corporate went public in Amsterdam in 2021 and was backed by US private equity firm Advent International.

Brzoska said his list of 150 possible co-plaintiffs included some former Polish presidents and prime ministers, but he didn’t give the precise names of the people he would approach.

He said the goal was to force Meta to stop the spread of deepfake scams, but not to hunt financial compensation for previous data breaches.

“I would love to encourage all of those 150 victims in Poland to hitch my lawsuit,” Brzoska said, searching for a precedent that might “allow other victims in other countries, especially within the European Union, to follow the identical path.” feasible: It will probably be very difficult for the victims within the USA, however the European Union is my great hope due to its regulations.”

The EU has pioneered the best to online privacy through laws resembling the General Data Protection Regulation, a landmark law that enables European regulators to impose large fines on corporations that fail to guard residents' data.

Meta said in a press release: “Fraud is a fancy threat that attacks, deceives and manipulates people across all industries. Fraudsters use every platform available to them and continually adapt to evade enforcement.”

The company added: “We don't want promoting that goals to defraud or mislead people on our apps – it violates our policies and harms our platforms.” That's why we proceed to take steps, together with our industry colleagues to enhance detection and enforcement.”

Video: Content creators tackle AI | FT Tech

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