Love is in the AI
Mason Amadeus: Live from the 8th Layer Media studios in the back rooms of the Deep Web, this is "The FAIK Files."
Perry Carpenter: When tech gets weird, we're here to make sense of it. I'm Perry Carpenter.
Mason Amadeus: And I'm Mason Amadeus. And on today's episode, we've got some fun stuff for you. We're going to open up talking about the first AI animated film, or at least it's claiming to be. It's called, "Where the Robots Grow," and it's -- it's something.
Perry Carpenter: Then we're going to go to an interview with good friend of the show, Lisa Plaggemier. She's the head of, or Executive Director of the National Cybersecurity Alliance.
Mason Amadeus: And after that, Perry, you have a Dumpster Fire prepared for us, right?
Perry Carpenter: Oh boy, do I.
Mason Amadeus: I can't wait. We'll have to wait and see what that is. Sit back, relax, and we've detected some suspicious activity from your account. You try writing all these intro jokes. We'll open up, "The FAIK Files," right after this. [ Papers shuffling ] So, there is -- this has happened a few times at this point. There is an AI, all AI generated movie. People keep talking about this. People keep talking about it [inaudible 00:01:21].
Perry Carpenter: They always claim to be like the first, right?
Mason Amadeus: All of them, they all claim to be the first.
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Mason Amadeus: And every single one of them has been disappointing. I -- I have -- I have yet to be impressed by any of these like, fully AI generated things.
Perry Carpenter: There was an 11-minute Star Wars one that somebody put in my feed today that was all AI generated except for the music and the lightsaber glow, supposedly.
Mason Amadeus: See, that's fun, and I feel like that would have some heart to it, because I'm assuming that that's someone that, like a fan made that, right? Like not a -- not a studio.
Perry Carpenter: It was -- it was fan made, and it was just okay.
Mason Amadeus: Yes.
Perry Carpenter: There's -- you know, there's some transition scenes that are really, really good. There's some nice imagination in it. A lot of it, though, is the frame of mind that you watch it, right? Because if you watch it wanting a motion picture quality thing, it's very rarely touching that. But if you're watching it in the -- the mindset of like a good video game cut scene, then they're pretty much on par with those.
Mason Amadeus: And that is, that you've articulated, like the core thing about this. Every single time, it seems that, and I don't exactly know how to quantify it, but like the intention really matters, because all of these really --
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Mason Amadeus: -- they lack, and I'm going to say like soul. They lack heart, but not in the sense that like a lot of people who are just against any kind of AI generated art say, but in the sense that it really feels like they set out to make a movie with AI, not setting out to make a movie and then using AI tools along the way. Like it very much is a tech [inaudible 00:02:48] --
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Mason Amadeus: -- all of these.
Perry Carpenter: Yes, it's a tail wagging the dog thing, right? It's a, "I want to prove that this technology is good at this," rather than, "I have a compelling story and the tools that I choose to pick up to tell that just happened to be AI because maybe that's the box that I have to live in right now for some reason.
Mason Amadeus: Yes, or even just to -- just to play with them. But it's --
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Mason Amadeus: -- this is the same trap that this -- this one fell into. So, "Where the Robots Grow," is a fully AI animated feature film that they made in just 90 days with a team of nine. I'm reading from a write up that they did with ElevenLabs. It was made by Tom Paton, who's the founder of AiMation Studios, who's trying to pioneer this sort of new pipeline for AI Filmmaking. Well, here's the synopsis for you. "Where the Robots Grow" follows the journey of a farming robot named Crew who discovers a human baby in a distant world and must navigate his newfound purpose under the guidance of an AI companion, Pop. And it features dialogue with lead actor Taylor Clark Hill voicing multiple characters using Eleven Labs voice AI to change the voice for different characters. And that's really cool and all. Like, the -- the voice performance, that part of it is actually pretty good. The -- the voice changers that ElevenLabs have are fantastic, and we've used them for various things, so that's cool. Where it really falls apart is the same place all these other things fall apart in that, like, there's not a very compelling story, and the story that's there isn't told very well. The writing is really lackluster. Like it lacks all of the things that a good video game cutscene has, for example, like --
Perry Carpenter: Right.
Mason Amadeus: -- you can love, and there are many ones that people love, a video game cutscene that isn't technically very impressive and doesn't even look that good, but has heart. And with that ingredient missing, there's just nothing -- nothing there. And this just feels like that all the way through. I watched more of it than I would care to admit. I did not watch the entire thing front to back. I wanted to challenge myself to, to like be like, "Am I just being a hater?" But man, it's -- it's just bland. And the other thing about it --
Perry Carpenter: It's only a minute and 31 seconds, at least on the version that I'm looking at.
Mason Amadeus: Oh --
Perry Carpenter: Is -- is --
Mason Amadeus: -- that's the trailer. It's like an hour and 20-something.
Perry Carpenter: Oh, that's the trailer. Oh -- oh, geez.
Mason Amadeus: Yes.
Perry Carpenter: Yes. No, I couldn't do that.
Mason Amadeus: So --
Perry Carpenter: Just the trailer itself was something to get through.
Mason Amadeus: The trailer -- and like, it's -- these kinds of things look good in trailers because if you take some disparate shots out of context, you're like, "Oh, pretty impressive. That was made with AI."
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Mason Amadeus: But this thing wasn't even mostly really made with AI. I mean, there's a lot of AI in the pipeline, so I don't want to say that. But the parts that a casual viewer would think were AI, weren't. For example, they used a lot of 3D models that were from asset marketplaces, like Blender Market and the Unreal Assets.
Perry Carpenter: Oh, okay.
Mason Amadeus: I believe -- and it was hard to find real information about the pipeline process. There's a couple interviews with this guy, Tom Paton, but it seems like they used Unreal. They used AI to do some of the animation or really to port over mocap into the animation. There's some clever, like creative workarounds in that they went for a low frame rate. So, there's that kind of choppy stop-motion quality to it that helps, I think, disguise some of the bad --
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Mason Amadeus: -- noise you get from AI tools like that. The effects are okay. They did this thing where they mixed all of the -- these different visual styles, like pop, the sort of helper characters, this very flat-shaded, low poly model of a guy and he pops up in like this little bubble. But none of it has cohesion. You know, and not in the normal way that AI things don't have cohesion where the characters like change from scene to scene. I mean, overall, from a visual design perspective, there's just not a cohesive element to draw it together. You can play with a lot of different visual styles. The Spider-Verse movies, for example, incredible.
Perry Carpenter: Yes, those are fantastic.
Mason Amadeus: Amazing to look at. And so, like mixing very different visual styles can be done. So, I'm not even trying to poo-poo that. It just -- the attention to detail wasn't there. It really, again, just feels like they set out to make an AI film, not setting out to make a film and using AI to help. Like all the shots to me really reek of being close enough, but not in a way that has heart. It is cool to see like, a small team of artists making something as big and as long as like an hour-and-20-minute film using AI, which is what made me excited about it at first. And I'm disappointed to see the result is just sort of more of the same.
Perry Carpenter: Yes, that is, it's -- it's weird. And I -- I do wonder like if people were to do interviews with the artists, like what the passion for the project was. Was it to use tools like AI to tell a story or was it that they had a burning story that they had to tell and they wanted to use AI? And I feel like if you're -- if you're leading with the technology as the why for putting something together, it's always going to feel like it's lacking heart. But if you're leading with the story and you're cobbling it together with the tools that you have, then it's going to feel, maybe it feels disjointed every now and then, maybe it feels like a little bit like a B-movie every now and then, but you still feel like the heart of it a lot more.
Mason Amadeus: Yes, and -- and that's exactly like what it suffers from. I was trying to put myself in the frame of watching it, not knowing it was AI. And --
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Mason Amadeus: -- I would have just been like, "This isn't a very good movie." You know? Like, you -- there's the -- the core of it wasn't there. And so --
Perry Carpenter: Right.
Mason Amadeus: -- I think something that also points to that kind of intention is a little further down in the write up about AiMation and Tom Paton, where they say, quote, "Paton isn't-- " or sorry, "Paton isn't just rethinking production. He's rethinking distribution. Instead of following the subscription-based streaming model, AiMation is pioneering a microtransaction based platform. The idea is to replace traditional theatrical releases with a pay-per-view model optimized for AI generated films and series." And Tom Paton quoted himself as saying, "We really believe we're about -- what we're about to unleash will drive the economic model for AI-powered content and ElevenLabs will be at the heart of that process." I have no doubts about ElevenLabs being at the heart of that process because they make a genuinely useful and powerful tool --
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Mason Amadeus: -- but it's pretty clear I think to see the angle that Tom Paton and Co are coming at this with, which is, "How do we make money with the least amount of people and least amount of effort in the entertainment space?" And I just -- I really can't wait for a -- like a good one of these. You know what I mean?
Perry Carpenter: Yes, yes.
Mason Amadeus: Like, I really can't wait for someone with a big artistic vision and a story that they want to tell, and they bust out these AI tools in really cool and clever ways. But I still have yet to find that. I was hoping this would be it.
Perry Carpenter: So, one of the folks that we know is a guy named Chris Machowski and he is, you know, he is a guy with a very artistic mindset that is like always looking to push the boundaries with the tools that he uses, and I think that he tends to bring a lot of heart to it, but he's not doing feature movie length stuff. He's doing very small pieces of things that are usually for a client or for a contest, but everything that he does is like at that quality level of -- of like where he's -- you can tell that there's an expression behind it. There's something that he's wanting to get across in it, rather than just picking up a tool and seeing what it'll do.
Mason Amadeus: Yes, and I -- I feel like, and -- and this isn't like a complete thesis, but what I've been coming to is that creativity is a lot in the choices that you make. And if you like --
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Mason Amadeus: -- AI allows you to turn over almost all of those choices. You know? You can just prompt and then take the result and you've made one choice. And that was it. You made that one choice and you take the rest. But if you take, like Chris does, you know, an idea and a concept, multiple tools, you're pulling bits and pieces and making a lot of creative decisions about where to apply them. And this looked like that at first. This film seemed like it was going to be that, but it just really -- I keep stopping myself because I don't want to poo-poo on someone's expression or like their creative art.
Perry Carpenter: Right.
Mason Amadeus: But it really -- it just smells like plastic and money the whole way through.
Perry Carpenter: Wow.
Mason Amadeus: And the other thing that's -- that's interesting about what the -- the company who made it wants to do, AiMation, they said that they want to use AI-driven reality TV. And now, this is an idea that I think would be interesting, where they have characters in Unreal Engine engaging in unscripted interactions. So like, AI-generated voices --
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Mason Amadeus: -- with AIs talking to each other, making an AI-generated reality show. That's a cool concept.
Perry Carpenter: There are versions of that already. I'd have to -- if I knew you were going to talk about that, I would have pulled the research, but there's a couple research papers out of -- oh, it's one of the -- one of the colleges in California like Berkeley or maybe Stanford. It was probably Stanford. But they -- they ran fully immersive AI kind of like, civilization experiments where you know, people form friendships and you know, it's -- it's basically like AI running the Sims. And there -- there have been some experiments on like turning that into things that could be like reality TV. And I think a lot of people are coming at this from very similar directions of saying, you know, "What -- what does the technology look like it can do today? And then how could I monetize that?"
Mason Amadeus: Yes.
Perry Carpenter: You know, the folks at Stanford, it was purely research, but then people look at that and they go, "Huh, that actually looks like this other thing that's already been monetized before. So, let's maybe see if we can do that."
Mason Amadeus: And -- and you know, that's the thing that kills all of this, is people are just trying to turn this into a money printing machine somehow. And like --
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Mason Amadeus: -- if that is your ultimate goal, it's going to be pretty clear that that's your ultimate goal from the get-go.
Perry Carpenter: One of the -- one of the things maybe that went wrong with this specific experiment is, I think any story with today's tools, whether it's AI or not, but traditionally with cinema and even with AI-based generations, every story comes together in the edit. And if their heart was behind the generation of the AI artifacts, but not the work of the edit to craft it into the story that they wanted to tell, then that's where it would fall flat, too. You could probably take all or most of these same artifacts that you felt fell flat, and if you edited differently, added different keyframes in there, did some -- some additional loving touches, changed the score a little bit, you know, changed frame rates here and there, all of that would entirely change the way that it felt for the viewer.
Mason Amadeus: Completely, but it just -- it comes across as like a tech demo with like not a lot of care put into the art part, just in the execution --
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Mason Amadeus: -- of it. And then I'll close this segment out with a quote from the write up where they said, "If he'd made 'Where the Robots Grow' using traditional methods, it would have cost millions and taken years to complete." And I would be embarrassed to say that if I was this team, considering that most of the assets that weren't AI generated were just bought from an asset store, like wholesale.
Perry Carpenter: Yes. Well, and that -- that goes back to my other bit about the -- the everything comes together in the edit. In many of these, the -- the post-production of the film is longer than the filming of the film. And I'm wondering how much time they spend on generation versus post-production.
Mason Amadeus: Yes, and like with most of I --
Perry Carpenter: It's like, you know, post-production may have been the evil afterthought.
Mason Amadeus: And you would hope -- you would hope not, because if you want to make a film, you want to make something that is enjoyable to watch from beginning to end. Yes, I don't know.
Perry Carpenter: You would hope.
Mason Amadeus: I was not impressed. I would recommend checking it out just so you can see it. I want to see a team, a small team of really talented artists make a film like this because they want to make a film, not because they want to make a new economic model for AI content generation. And that's just where I kind of stand.
Perry Carpenter: Yes. Check out some of this stuff. And it's -- it's not necessarily wholesome. It's not necessarily like --
Mason Amadeus: Where are you going, Perry? Where's this going?
Perry Carpenter: I would look at some of the -- sorry. I would look at some of the -- the short films that are basically prototypes from the Dor brothers, the D-O-R brothers.
Mason Amadeus: Okay.
Perry Carpenter: And what they do all the time is like do face swapping and AI generated scenery to express themselves socially and politically, and then also to show where the technology can take us. And so, there's lots of stuff with like political figures and Mark Zuckerberg breaking into, you know, little local shops and stuff and being arrested and --
Mason Amadeus: I'll have to check that out. I've got a --
Perry Carpenter: -- but you can tell they love what they do --
Mason Amadeus: Yes.
Perry Carpenter: -- in the way that they put it together.
Mason Amadeus: Well, it sounds like they're like having fun with it, not trying to create a new economic model.
Perry Carpenter: And their tongue is planted firmly in their cheek as they do all of it.
Mason Amadeus: Well, I have a fun tab open in the background to check out after this episode now.
Perry Carpenter: Sweet.
Mason Amadeus: And I think coming up next, we're moving into our interview with -- with Lisa Plaggemier. So, things are going to take a little bit of a heavy turn, but nothing -- I don't think anything content warning worthy is coming up, but it is -- things will get a little bit heavy. Stick around for that. [ Music ]
Perry Carpenter: All right, and welcome back, everybody. We are here with Lisa Plaggemier, Executive Director of the National Cybersecurity Alliance. Lisa has been really raising a lot of flags around the seriousness of romance scams. So, for people who have been following us for a while, you've heard from Erin West about pig butchering scams, now let's go a little bit higher level, a little bit broader and talk about romance scams in general. And Lisa, I know that NCA has had an effort around bringing education for romance scams. So like, what is the -- what is the top-level story that you give to the general public about, you know, what a romance scam is and what to look out for?
Lisa Plaggemier: Yes, actually every year we do a campaign around this time of the year. We usually kick it off at the end of January or beginning of February. And we -- we don't just talk about romance scams, because that's -- that is timely, but we also talk about safe use of dating apps, because oftentimes one can lead to the other. You might meet somebody on a dating app, and they do some things that should be red flags, like immediately want to take the conversations off of the dating app and move to an encrypted app for -- for example. So, we do a whole -- we do a whole campaign kit, so that people have some cute little social media graphics, so you'll see our campaign and then you might see other organizations using our materials, too. Yes, there are definitely some red flags that, you know, the -- the relationship moving very quickly, more quickly than this seems like would be normal. You know, you magically -- this magically feels like your soulmate very quickly. They seem to relate to you on a bunch of different levels. I think the thing that -- that really -- that really gets me in the gut about these particular scams, is that they're preying on a -- a common human weakness we have, that we all have a need for human connection. And sometimes, when we go through difficult periods in our -- in our lives, you know, they're looking for people that have maybe just had a battle with a serious illness or lost a loved one, or we often find that people who have a tendency to maybe overshare on social media about some of those things, you're really kind of painting a target on yourself. And it's a shame because you're at a time when you're, you know, that's your way these days, potentially of -- of reaching out to people to get support from your friends is doing a post about what you're going through. So, that just brings us back around to our advice of making things like your friends list private on Facebook. And you can still use social media, but it really, you know, goes all the way back to the safe use of -- of social media. People don't realize the different things that they're putting out there and how -- how that data's being aggregated. That information is being collected in a way -- what's publicly available and then what's available on the Dark Web, to know so much about you that they can seem like your soulmate really quickly.
Perry Carpenter: Yes, I can imagine. You know, a couple years ago, I heard horror stories about people who would scan the internet for obituaries and then basically, like see where there's a widow or a widower left and --
Mason Amadeus: Oh no.
Perry Carpenter: -- put it on their calendar to six months later reach out to that person and see what they could -- could do. Is -- is that kind of stuff really happening or is it more just crimes of convenience and finding people that have their profiles open on Facebook and then just doing a DM based on what they've seen in the profile?
Lisa Plaggemier: No, I think -- I think it's really happening. I've heard of that a couple of times from folks in federal law enforcement. You have to remember that usually a romance scam is a long con. So --
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Lisa Plaggemier: -- the -- the payoff is bigger than, you know, some other kind of scam with a -- a lower payoff that might be quicker for them to perpetrate. So, they're going to, in other words, sadly, it's worth the investment of their time. They're going to do a little research. They're going to look at obituaries. They're going to look at other information about you. They're going to do that research on the Dark Web and then put that together with what they can find publicly available. Figure out where you might be vulnerable. Figure out what are the emotional threads that they can pull on. What are -- you know, how can they tug on your heartstrings? What story can they tell you that might resonate with you because of something you went through years ago that they just happened to find an -- an old post on? So -- so, it's really worth it for them. I'm also hearing from federal law enforcement that they're building really intricate backstories. So, there was a point where you would say to a potential victim, "Just make sure you independently verify everything that they're telling you." In other words, you know, what they do for a living, who their family members are, all those things.
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Lisa Plaggemier: And you could go do a quick Google and, you know, you might not find anything, or you do a reverse image search, and you realize that that's a stock photo. Well, these days now with AI generating the photos, they've realized that they need to build intricate backstories. So, they've --
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Lisa Plaggemier: -- they've created a whole character and a whole life and a family and Facebook pictures and, you know, a LinkedIn profile and all these things, maybe a fake website for the company that they work at or something, whatever -- whatever they need to substantiate the story that they're telling you. And so, you can't even really independently verify anymore by you know, the kinds of things we would all do, like Googling somebody's name, our own little version of Osen [phonetic]. It's not -- it's not enough, anymore. So, it really gets down to, you know, those other telltale signs and -- and the -- the big obvious sign, they've asked me for money --
Mason Amadeus: Right.
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Lisa Plaggemier: -- or something that can be converted into money.
Mason Amadeus: What are some of the most common vectors for that first contact? Like you mentioned dating apps is one of them, but I also like recently learned that sometimes those texts you get where it seems like it was sent to the wrong person is actually someone trying to begin you down this path. What are some of like those -- those vectors that you would -- you know, the very first time that you get contacted by this person, what does that look like in different [inaudible 00:22:22]?
Lisa Plaggemier: The random texts are absolutely a thing. I mean, you've talked to Erin West, you've heard about pig butchering and -- and how random those things are, and -- and that's the start of a relationship scam or a romance scam, right? They're just trying to get you to respond. So, the best practice there is just to report and delete. Social media. Facebook in particular, it's really important to have your -- have your profile be as locked down as -- as it possibly can be, your friends list private, things like that. Don't respond to any DMs on -- on Facebook. You know, if we have our whole life history on there and everybody can see it, or they can piece it together through various other websites, then you can -- you know, one of the frequent scenarios I hear about is somebody reaching out saying, "Oh, don't you remember? It's me from elementary school or middle school, or your high school sweetheart" or something, and maybe you've just been widowed or you're a widow or widower.
Mason Amadeus: But it is primarily like unsolicited direct messages, not so much like groups that are --
Lisa Plaggemier: Yes.
Mason Amadeus: -- sort of honeypots for things like that? It's mostly unsolicited DMs?
Lisa Plaggemier: So, it can -- one of the frequent vectors I hear about that's very, very hard for a lot of victims to recognize is, most of us, unfortunately, I don't think have or enough of us have MFA enabled on their Facebook account. And if -- so, that can lead to account takeovers. This has happened to people like my aunt, somebody, you know, she's probably using a recycled password or one that's way too short. So, somebody's hacked her Facebook account, and I'm getting DMs from her, but they're not really my Aunt Betty. They're just somebody pretending to be my Aunt Betty. So that happens a lot, I think, in -- in friendship scams, romance scams can lead to pig butchering, you know, crypto scams, where you've had a friend or an acquaintance whose Facebook account has been taken over. I've even heard stories where that person has reported it to Facebook. Facebook doesn't give them control of the account back because if you think about it, you didn't have to give Facebook your driver's license or your passport to open a Facebook account. So, they really don't have any way of proving that that's you, that you're the one really asking for your account back. And so oftentimes, they'll just kind of leave it dangling out there. The real owner of the account doesn't have control of it. Somebody else has control of it. And then they're using that to scam other people. There was a case in the news just recently, not romance scam related. I think it was crypto scam related, but it was Canadian law enforcement. So, somebody from the Canadian law enforcement or maybe they were retired, lost control of their Facebook account. That account was then used to contact other retirees from Canadian law enforcement, and a few of them lost their life savings because they were convinced that they were being taught by their friend how to invest in crypto.
Mason Amadeus: Wow.
Lisa Plaggemier: So, account takeovers leading to really bad things is a big problem. And I really wish that Facebook would mandate MFA.
Mason Amadeus: Yes.
Perry Carpenter: And you -- you mentioned like, social media profiles. So, it's -- it's you know, going to do a background check on somebody who just contacted you and it's easy now to fabricate things. I think it's also important to point out that just because a social media account hasn't been created two days ago, doesn't mean that it's a good social media account. It could be account takeover or it could have been a sock puppet account that was created ten years ago, and somebody's been cultivating it, but they just changed the name on it.
Lisa Plaggemier: Yes, they're aging -- they're aging those accounts now.
Perry Carpenter: Yes, yes. Building connections and everything else.
Lisa Plaggemier: Yes, I saw somebody post on LinkedIn a couple of months ago, a list -- some retired general who I don't even think had a Facebook account, and there's -- he found 20 fake profiles pretending to be that retired general --
Perry Carpenter: Wow.
Mason Amadeus: Gosh.
Lisa Plaggemier: -- of the US military.
Mason Amadeus: Gosh, the legitimate -- like the legitimate account takeovers is -- is something I haven't thought about. I don't -- I haven't been using Facebook very much lately. I do have MFA enabled. Don't try me. But I -- I have seen friends get their accounts hacked, but I -- I didn't think about that for this kind of attack. That's -- that's devastating. That's a trusted network being invaded.
Lisa Plaggemier: I don't think I've met anybody that hasn't said, "Yes, I've gotten a DM from somebody who -- a friend of mine who had their account taken over." Like, it's happens so, so, so frequently. And I think Facebook only requires, what is it, a six or eight digit --
Mason Amadeus: Yes.
Lisa Plaggemier: -- or character password?
Mason Amadeus: I think it's like eight.
Lisa Plaggemier: Which is incredibly short. I mean, that takes seconds to crack.
Perry Carpenter: Well, and I mean, that's the thing with -- with Meta in general. They've got so many problems like that, that if they really wanted to fix, they could fix in an instant, but for whatever reason, they're not incented to yet.
Lisa Plaggemier: That is correct. I did some checking. If Google is to be believed, if the site that I landed on, their biggest advertiser, because we've thought about like where's the -- where's the leverage with Meta, their -- their largest advertiser is Temu --
Mason Amadeus: Oh, wow.
Lisa Plaggemier: -- which is tied to the -- tied to the CCP.
Perry Carpenter: Oh, okay.
Lisa Plaggemier: Yes.
Perry Carpenter: That's something Mason and I have been like tracking over the past several weeks, especially since the -- the TikTok ban was coming to, you know, a 12-hour ban, was coming to a head. China is really bringing its A game on information warfare and all the -- all the pressure campaigns that -- that it can bring to us economically, socially, politically, and so on, because we have seen, you know, TikTok and we saw people willingly fleeing over to RedNote.
Lisa Plaggemier: Yes.
Perry Carpenter: And then -- then we saw within weeks of that, a whole bunch of consternation because of the release of DeepSeek, which had concerns and people are trying to figure out how to deal with that. But that caused some economic hardship internally here in the US and people questioning our leadership and different areas of the tech industry. And -- and now we've got, on top of all that, a -- a named trade war with them and people trying to figure out how to react to that. When it comes to romance scams and when it comes to the things that worry you, I guess, as Executive Director of the NCA, maybe it's broader than just romance scams, but where does China fit into that picture?
Lisa Plaggemier: Well, if -- if you -- if you believe Erin West and some of what was written -- this was hinted at in the House Select Committee on the CCP report on fentanyl. There is a gangster known as Broken Tooth who's involved in the fentanyl trade. And he's also the guy running pig butchering, basically running the -- those scam centers, the human traffic, you know, where human trafficking victims have been trafficked into these scam centers and -- and romance scams is in their toolbox, right? You know --
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Lisa Plaggemier: -- that's -- romance scams are potentially a part of a -- a bit larger pig butchering scam, as are you know, friendship scams, crypto scams, whatever it is. It's all kind of all the good things rolled into one.
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Lisa Plaggemier: And so, he, I think, sits on a committee on the CCP. Like, he's -- he's tied to the government. And so, I have asked some folks on the Hill, "Boy, it would be great if we could get this in writing." If we could tie the scams, you know, romance scams, friendship scams, pig butchering, all these things back to the CCP as part of their strategy to weaken the United States, and we had more solid numbers on the losses. Erin's estimate is -- is quite high, larger than what you see reported anyplace else. I think somewhere around the neighborhood of 40 to 50 billion dollars a year. Then I think you might have some more people taking notice. You know, we -- we always -- years ago in cybersecurity, gosh, I hope I don't say this anymore, but we used to talk about people as the weakest link. I think that China has found people as the weakest link. You know, I'm -- I'm not going to walk away with millions of dollars, no matter how many people I have hacking away at our financial services industry, for example. But we can hack grandma, you know, or we can hack a romance scam victim for a couple thousand bucks or a couple hundred thousand bucks, and eventually that really starts to add up. And I will quote Erin West, "It is the wholesale movement of wealth from the United States to the CCP." So, I -- I do hope that if you're a researcher out there and you're listening and you're looking for something to do and you want to tie romance scams and pig butchering and all those things back to -- back to Broken Tooth and on to the CCP, there is -- there is some information out there, but I don't think we've -- there's been enough explicit research that makes that really, really clear, that connection really clear. So, that's why I think it's even more important that people take these things seriously, because you're not just up against some local criminal who's -- who's a solo operator. You're up against potentially a nation state and -- and highly, highly, you know, very well-organized crime, very sophisticated with psychological manipulation and -- and all the technology and tools at their -- at their disposal, AI. You know, so it's -- it's really something -- one of the things that we've thought about doing lately, because most of us -- we do a report every year called "Oh Behave!" about how people feel about these things. And of course, most people don't think they're going to be the one who's going to fall for any of this stuff. They're not going to be the one who's going to click on the fish. They're not going to be the one who's going to fall for a romance scam or friendship scam. So, saying to people, "This could happen to you," doesn't really resonate because they don't think it can. So, I think some of our future materials and campaigns are going to be more about like taking care of the people around you and looking out for the people in your life that might be going through a rough time or might be vulnerable in some way. And -- because we all like to help other people. We all like to think of ourselves --
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Lisa Plaggemier: -- as people who help other people. So, maybe that's the emotional lever or the trigger that we use to try and keep more people from being victimized.
Mason Amadeus: Yes. And actually, when we -- when we talked with Erin, that was something that -- that I had asked about and we brought up too, is that, you know, you who's listening to this podcast are probably more plugged into this than the next like five nearest people to you. So, it's your job as the person who knows this to be looking out for them. It's not necessarily about you always, but I -- I wanted to ask about -- because we spoke to Erin West and the way she described the scale of these operations was like industrialized and -- and that -- that is true, right, that it is a big operation with like plazas of people, like of buildings with people doing that?
Lisa Plaggemier: Yes, they -- they basically look like a corporate campus or a college campus. It looks like a big row of dorms.
Mason Amadeus: Why?
Lisa Plaggemier: Building upon building. I mean, you can Google it, there'll be photos. Erin probably has some on a website somewhere, as well.
Perry Carpenter: Right.
Lisa Plaggemier: The construction is happening really quickly. She's -- she's looked over the border at some of these places and has witnessed and has aerial photos to see how quickly they're growing. And the construction is just constant with cement trucks coming and going. And so, yes, it's -- it's not -- it's -- it's not slowing down, unfortunately.
Perry Carpenter: So, in the last five-ish minutes that we have, I know you've got an effort to educate people about this. The NCA has -- has been trying to bring information about this, you know, these kinds of scams and more to the public for quite a while. Tell us about the education campaign for romance scams. And then I want to ask you and have you kind of leave off with some of the video work that you've been doing.
Lisa Plaggemier: So, on staysafeonline.org on the homepage, you're going to find a big banner photo that leads you to the romance scam campaign. If you're working in training awareness, you're working in security, and you're trying to do a campaign for your organization, there's a campaign kit that you can download. And I love some of the graphics that we have in there because they look like -- to me, they're reminiscent of the things you go buy at CVS for your kid to give away at school on Valentine's Day. So, they're cute little graphics. I'll tell you a story about one a couple years ago. We did one that looked like the Chinese flag, except it was pink and red, and instead of stars, there were hearts. And it had a couple dancing around in the center of the graphic, and it read, "I love your face. Let me add it to my database." This was right when China was ramping up a lot of their facial recognition for -- for controlling the public. And on LinkedIn, somebody shouted out the kit, and she happened to be in training and awareness at a company in Hong Kong.
Mason Amadeus: Oh, wow.
Lisa Plaggemier: And I said to the -- said to the graphic artist, "I think her name's on a list somewhere." And he said, "Lisa, your name is probably on a list somewhere." So, it really made me realize just how far and wide our campaign materials go. And I was really -- that I -- obviously I'm talking about it now. I still haven't forgotten about that. You'll see us in -- in the -- in the press around this time of -- of year because a lot of the media around Valentine's Day likes -- likes to pick up on that topic. Last year on Valentine's evening, I was doing talk radio with the Boston radio station, instead of going out to dinner with my husband. I'm going to try to do dinner this year.
Perry Carpenter: Priorities.
Lisa Plaggemier: Priorities, yes, priorities.
Mason Amadeus: Oh, no.
Lisa Plaggemier: But lots of good materials you can use there. And as I said, we focus not just on romance scams, but also on the safe use of dating apps, because that's, you know, that -- that can be where things start. They're so -- they're so critical these days to meeting people. I know so many people that are happily married because they met on a -- on a -- on a dating app. So, we just want people to use those safely.
Perry Carpenter: Fantastic. So then, I think the last thing, you know, NCA does such a good job providing resources to people that are in the awareness community, but then more broadly to anybody really. Tell us a little bit about the Kubikle Series because it also touches on Mason's thought around, you know, like what's the scale of criminal enterprise? And I think you try to reflect that in that series pretty well.
Lisa Plaggemier: Yes. So, you asked me about the video work. I forgot to mention that. So, thanks very much for reminding me. So, if you go to kubikleseries.com, it's cubicle spelled with K's or you go to the Stay Safe Online YouTube channel, you will find a series that has now had 19 million views. It is basically like watching the episode -- an episode of The Office, but it's The Office of the Bad Guys. So, the characters represent people from Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.
Mason Amadeus: Oh, fun.
Lisa Plaggemier: The Iranian character cracks me up. He is dressed like he just came out of a disco in 1979. The actor did a really great job. But they -- they -- we have episodes on romance scams. We have episodes on sextortion, phishing, everything you can possibly imagine. And so, we have just gotten funding, I'm very excited to announce, for a second season because the first season I think was so successful. We won a CSO award for it and of course had 19 million people watch it. I think the thing that makes me the happiest is that people didn't just scroll through it like a TikTok video. Over 80% of people watched it on a large screen. So, they either watched it on YouTube TV or they cast it to -- to a larger device. So, that for me is a really good indicator of engagement with the content.
Mason Amadeus: Yes.
Lisa Plaggemier: And then we're working right now on fundraising because every time I watch Dateline or 2020, I think to myself, "Where's my episode on cybercrime or -- or scams that are cyber enabled?" I'm kind of tired of watching married people kill their spouse instead of get a divorce. It'd be nice to see -- and for the people that we work with in the Secret Service, we keep asking like, "Why don't they know that -- why doesn't the public know that they investigate cybercrime?"
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Lisa Plaggemier: "And fraud?" And the answer from them is always, "Well, the FBI gets all the TV shows." So, we're looking at doing a documentary or a docudrama, and we have a producer who has had content on, I think, Showtime and other networks in the past, very successful, and he -- he likes our mission and is willing to work with us in a way that's affordable for us, but we still have some fundraising to do. So, we're really excited about that.
Mason Amadeus: That's wicked cool.
Perry Carpenter: Oh, fantastic.
Lisa Plaggemier: If we can do an episode or two, and they're compelling and they get some good views, then maybe we'll get funding to do more. [ Music ]
Perry Carpenter: All right, so for this week's "AI Dumpster Fire of the Week," I will hearken us back to last week, which was the entire AI industry. This week, it's not maybe the entire AI industry, but it's some very familiar names and very familiar situations. So, people in AI are familiar with the name of Sam Altman, who is the CEO and one of the founders of Open AI. And everybody, whether you want to be or not, is familiar with the name Elon Musk, who is his -- his own interesting entity these days in a lot of different areas.
Mason Amadeus: Those words are doing a lot of lifting.
Perry Carpenter: Yes, but what some people may not realize if they've not -- not been following Open AI for a long time, is that Elon Musk was one of the original folks that started Open AI, and he split off several years ago because they had a difference of opinion in how to run the company. And so, there's been no love loss, and this is why this fits into Valentine's Day. The bromance ended a long time ago, but the -- the fighting still continues. You know, they're arguing over who gets custody of the kids a lot. And what you see is, you see Elon Musk constantly, because he has a lot of ADHD and a lot of money at the same time, and just likes to poke people and troll people, constantly just coming after open AI. And you, you know, love Sam Altman or hate Sam Altman, doesn't even matter in this circumstance [inaudible 00:40:36] you've just got also on the other side of the thing, somebody that just wants to troll that company because they have a personal beef. And so, back about a year or so ago, when people were saying AI advancement should slow down some, and they, you know, a lot of people saw -- signed a letter saying to pause it, Elon Musk was one of the signatures of that. Of course, Elon Musk also has his own AI company, XAI, which is the -- the one that the Grok model is under that's, you know, being distributed through X. So, Elon's sincerity in signing that was always called into question by even very neutral people in -- in all of this. Sam did not sign that letter and continued on because he believes, as do a lot of people, that there's an arms race globally with this.
Mason Amadeus: Yes, pausing isn't super realistic when all of these different people and all these different companies and all these different countries are working on it. Like, yes, how would that even work?
Perry Carpenter: Yes.
Mason Amadeus: Yes.
Perry Carpenter: But over and over and over again, I think it's like four different times now, Elon has sued OpenAI. One, trying to say that they really have not held to the spirit of their founding --
Mason Amadeus: I mean --
Perry Carpenter: -- which is, you know, there -- there's some legit stuff with that.
Mason Amadeus: Yes.
Perry Carpenter: Sam Altman's response to that is what -- we never said we were going to be open source, but we said that the discoveries that we make, we wanted to make open to the world, which I think is an interesting counterpoint, and they do make a lot of stuff freely available around the world.
Mason Amadeus: A little bit of word shuffling to look good, but yes.
Perry Carpenter: There is some word shuffling. There's -- there's also, I think, legitimate concern around do you want models like this to be open source or open waits. And I think that there's legitimate debate around saying maybe we should keep some of this stuff closed so that people can responsibly develop. But with Deep Seek and Llama 3 and Llama 4 coming out soon, the -- the open waits stuff is kind of out of the barn a little bit, even with reasoning models, so. So, there's that.
Mason Amadeus: Yes. Deep Seek walked in and dumped a toilet full of kerosene on the fire. Like, they really --
Perry Carpenter: They -- they did. They did. And that -- that fire continues to burn. And with Open AI trying to change their structure from being this, you know, more kind of -- trying to think of the right word, but -- but more charity-based type of organization to a for-profit organization. I guess what I should have said was non-profit, from -- moving from non-profit to for-profit because they are bringing loads and loads of money.
Mason Amadeus: They were -- they were a non-profit initially, right? That -- that was true?
Perry Carpenter: Yes, they still are. They're -- they --
Mason Amadeus: Oh.
Perry Carpenter: -- they received approval to change to a for-profit as part of that last funding round that they got.
Mason Amadeus: Oh, I didn't know that.
Perry Carpenter: And they have a certain amount of time to do that conversion.
Mason Amadeus: Okay.
Perry Carpenter: And Elon, of course, sued on top of that as well, trying to put gum in the works. But the -- the most recent troll is from a couple days ago, and it says, I'm reading from Yahoo Finance, and it's been reported everywhere also, "Elon Musk reportedly offers $97.4 billion for OpenAI." And then Sam Altman says, "No, thank you." And it's -- it's really interesting because in -- in the offer, supposed offer, we'll put that in quotes because Reuters is saying as of an hour ago as we recorded this on Wednesday, that the board never received any formal notice or letter or anything like that. It's just noise --
Mason Amadeus: That --
Perry Carpenter: -- that Elon Musk has been, you know, fundraising with a group of other people and they're putting it out in the news to float it.
Mason Amadeus: Yes.
Perry Carpenter: There has been no official letter and officially though, the board and Sam says "No, thank you. We'll -- we'll keep this for ourselves." And Sam even trolled Elon on X and says, "No, we'll stay away from the 97.4 billion, but we will offer you $9.74 billion for Twitter." So.
Mason Amadeus: He should take it. He didn't even want Twitter in the first place. Although now it's --
Perry Carpenter: He didn't want it in the first place and it's probably -- he'd probably be getting a prime -- I mean more than it's worth, right? He bought it for $40 billion and I think I've seen that it's worth maybe a tenth of that now. I don't know.
Mason Amadeus: I mean at that -- the valuation on that's going to be a little tricky though, because for Elon Musk personally as a tool to be a megaphone, it's pretty valuable I feel like for him now.
Perry Carpenter: Yes, yes.
Mason Amadeus: He's turning it into that.
Perry Carpenter: Well, and with his -- with his position and posturing within the current administration, it's --
Mason Amadeus: Yes.
Perry Carpenter: -- you know, it's kind of like state-run media at --
Mason Amadeus: Yes.
Perry Carpenter: -- this point just to get across his point of view or the point of view of anybody that he -- he's agree with. But if you go and you start to dig into the position that Elon has taken on all this where he keeps saying, "Well, we want to pay this money or we want to sue Open AI because we want them to return to their roots," there's not a lot of sincerity in that statement. Open AI has brought the receipt several times and we'll put links in the Show Notes for this. But they've got copies of emails and filings from Elon from way back with Elon saying that he wants Tesla to own that, that they should convert to a for-profit that's run by Tesla and is advancing all of those other types of projects. So, Elon saying that it's about returning to its roots is -- is -- has no validity at all.
Mason Amadeus: Yes, I didn't -- I wasn't fooled for a second.
Perry Carpenter: And -- and one of the statements that they made, this is back from December of last year of 2024, Sam says, "You can't sue your way to AGI. We have great respect for Elon's accomplishments and gratitude for his early contributions to OpenAI, but he should not be competing in -- but he should be competing in the marketplace rather than the courtroom. It's critical for the US to remain the global leader in AI. Our mission is to ensure that AGI benefits all of humanity. And we have -- and we have been and will remain a mission-driven organization. We hope that Elon shares that goal and will uphold the values of innovation, the free market and competition, and he'll essentially be able to drive his own success." In interviews about this situation with Elon offering money, he says, and has very directly said, that he just feels like Elon is desperate, that he's not going fast enough with his own innovation, even though he's throwing tons of money at it, and is feeling kind of hopeless, but he knows that the advancements that OpenAI and some of the others are making are going to be critical to the future.
Mason Amadeus: But he's been so busy running through various governmental systems and causing all sorts of chaos. Is he even focused on --
Perry Carpenter: Yes, I mean --
Mason Amadeus: -- his AI development?
Perry Carpenter: -- with the -- with the big wrecking balls going through everything at this point, right?
Mason Amadeus: Yes, like --
Perry Carpenter: That teenager named Big Balls that's been going through everything.
Mason Amadeus: Yes, yes exactly. Oh gosh, we can't get into that or else we're going to --
Perry Carpenter: No, we can't. That's it. This is not a political podcast, but --
Mason Amadeus: Yes, but is he like, I don't -- I have -- I feel like we hear the least about Grok. I -- I don't know anything about Grok. It --
Perry Carpenter: So, I've, yes, I've used Grok every now and then, which is really interesting because, again, not a political podcast, but if you -- if you ask Grok about platforms that are known for spreading disinformation and people who are known for spreading disinformation, X and Elon come up as reported by Grok over and over and over again. The other thing is that -- that Grok, the image model is one that you can use to create some fairly uncensored images of public figures or celebrities or things like that. So, you could use it to create disinformation if you wanted to as well, versus open AI and others who are trying to curtail a lot of that and be good global citizens.
Mason Amadeus: That makes sense with his, I'm going to say, purported free speech [inaudible 00:48:59].
Perry Carpenter: [inaudible 00:49:00] free speech. Yes.
Mason Amadeus: Yes, which is -- we can talk about what the words free speech mean on our political podcast that we hopefully will never start. But --
Perry Carpenter: No, do not want to wade in those waters at all.
Mason Amadeus: Yes, but so, I didn't think for a second that this offer was sincere, and it doesn't sound like either did Sam Altman. And it's a low-ball offer, right?
Perry Carpenter: No.
Mason Amadeus: Their valuation recently went up to almost 400 billion, right?
Perry Carpenter: Three hundred billion, I think, in one of the articles we were reading right before we started. So, if they -- if this funding round completes, they'll be valued at about 300 billion. And you know, whoever gets to AGI first, or especially whoever gets to ASI, will rake in trillions of dollars.
Mason Amadeus: This --
Perry Carpenter: And so, $97.4 billion is like nothing compared to that. And the people who are behind OpenAI know that as well. And of course, Elon knows that too, so he's --
Mason Amadeus: Yes.
Perry Carpenter: -- more than anything, he's just trying to create a market narrative, I think, and to continually troll and slow things down.
Mason Amadeus: A lot of dumpsters, a lot of fires, and Elon seems to just like throwing random amounts of money into those fires at different times.
Perry Carpenter: Yes, well, he's got enough to do it.
Mason Amadeus: Yes, that's for sure. I'm going to do the segue that popped into my mind, but I just want everyone to know it's not sincere. You know, who doesn't have enough money to do whatever they want? Us, so you should join our Discord and support our show. I would never --
Perry Carpenter: Discord is free, by the way, so [inaudible 00:50:27].
Mason Amadeus: Yes, it doesn't actually --
Perry Carpenter: It's not like we're going to get money for that.
Mason Amadeus: Yes, gosh, I don't ever want to be as rich as Elon Musk, either. That's -- that much wealth is --
Perry Carpenter: I think it changes the way you view the world and the way that you view other people. I think you see other people as NPCs.
Mason Amadeus: Yes, it's -- and it's --
Perry Carpenter: [inaudible 00:50:42] changes, yes, it's got to be different.
Mason Amadeus: Hoarding that amount of resources is unethical. Like, it's -- it's [inaudible 00:50:48] amount.
Perry Carpenter: Well, and it's also -- at some point, it comes to the point where you're not really even hoarding anymore because you're making so much on interest and everything else that you can't spend it fast enough to get rid of it.
Mason Amadeus: Don't worry, the system is working as intended. Go ahead, join our Discord. Check the Show Notes for links to all the articles and the various things we covered today. If you want to support the show, we've got ways for you to do that. You should join our Discord and chat with us.
Perry Carpenter: Yes, everybody go enjoy Valentine's Day 2025. Don't get romance scammed.
Mason Amadeus: Yes.
Perry Carpenter: And we will see you later.
Mason Amadeus: See you next time. [ Music ]
