Pune Inc: How 3 Pune entrepreneurs are fighting deepfakes with their own AI

Indian Express

17 hours ago

In January 2024, a major scam shook the world. It involved an online meeting of a Hong Kong-based company in which a finance department employee was authorised to make 15 cash transfers totaling $25.5 million for an urgent acquisition. Soon, the company realised that the employee had been the only real person at the meeting. All others, including the Chief Financial Officer, had been deepfakes created by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
To fight such crimes, a Pune-based company, pi-labs, was founded by Ankush Tiwari, Abhijeet Zilpelwar, and Dr Raghu Sesha Iyengar in 2023. The founders and their team members have worked together for more than 20 years in different environments. The company has its office in Aundh, fittingly located above a closely guarded jewellery showroom. Every week, pi-labs starts with a scrutiny of products, opportunities, roadmaps, and threats – the team members are security guards in their own right; their opponents are the gangs that deploy Artificial Intelligence-based technology to perpetrate digital deception.
Tiwari, who is also the CEO, rattles off the threats that India alone confronts.
'India is very digitally savvy and has one of the best financial stacks in the world. A key feature is the video KYC. Now, deepfake (technology that can digitally alter a person's appearance) can bypass video KYCs to mimic somebody who has a good credit profile. Initiatives, such as the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, could be compromised. Deepfakes can make a lot of dead people alive, at least for the first six months, when the paperwork is taking place, and start siphoning off money. The losses would be crazy,' he says.
The HR wing in major companies conducts recruitment interviews online, and who would know if an incompetent candidate gets an expert to answer the questions in a deepfake? 'Even if two per cent of incompetent candidates clear interviews in deepfake, it would result in direct monetary losses to the company, customer frustration, customer trust issues, and embarrassment,' says Tiwari.
Then, there is law enforcement, where Artificial Intelligence is regularly being used to create new scams, from voice cloning to digital arrest. 'In the defence sector, too, how do we make sure that the country is protected from misinformation campaigns, and figure out the noise from the reality?' asks Tiwari.
Belonging to an Army background, Tiwari got involved in the venture with the conviction that deepfake crimes, though they will rise exponentially, can be prevented. A bootstrapped and now customer-funded venture, pi-labs has created a deepfake detection platform called Authentify, which is AI++-based and can detect and verify the authenticity of digital media, such as video, audio, images, and voice cloning.
'Authentify can be deployed either on-premise or in the cloud, giving organisations the flexibility to choose the setup that best suits their needs while ensuring the highest level of data confidentiality. It is designed to address the evolving threats of deepfakes and tampered content, and aims to protect the digital assets of enterprises,' says Tiwari.
The company primarily works with law enforcement agencies at the state and central levels, and the Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) sector.
'We launched our project in an interesting time, when India and several other democracies were going to have elections. Most of these countries were impacted by one deepfake or another. We could detect when a video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Bollywood actors that came in was not right. There have been cases of women impersonation and child pornography that we have helped with. Being on the defensive side, we help law enforcement agencies,' Tiwari mentions.
With enterprises, on the other hand, pi-labs plays a protective role by keeping away deepfake videos and KYCs. Pilot projects are underway with five banks.
'We are a grounded company, but we proudly claim that we have a potent deepfake deduction product. We believe things of national security have to be built by native entrepreneurs, and we at pi-labs are doing innovations for a safer tomorrow. Slowly, but surely, we are finding our space. We will always be a bottom-line-looking company, which is not in a hurry, so we take no shortcuts. We are ready to build the hard way, but the essential belief in the team is that we are on to something big. We are building for national defence and India's security,' says Tiwari.
Dipanita Nath is interested in the climate crisis and sustainability. She has written extensively on social trends, heritage, theatre and startups. She has worked with major news organizations such as Hindustan Times, The Times of India and Mint. ... Read More