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Even still, De Bolle estimated that EU authorities are confiscating less than two percent of criminal organizations’ annual earnings, money that is hidden across the globe.

From: Money-laundering criminals are adapting to new technology faster than authorities can keep up, EU report says – ICIJ.

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Meta is officially entering the AI chatbot wars, starting with its own assistant and a slew of AI characters it’s releasing in WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger.

For anyone who has used OpenAI’s ChatGPT, or other chatbots like Anthropic’s Claude, Meta’s AI will immediately feel familiar. Meta sees it as a general-purpose assistant for everything from planning a trip with friends in a group chat to answering questions you’d normally ask a search engine. On that latter piece, Meta is announcing a partnership with Microsoft’s Bing to provide real-time web results, which sets Meta AI apart from a lot of the other free AIs out there that don’t have super recent information.

Another big aspect of the Meta AI is its ability to generate images like Midjourney or OpenAI’s DALL-E via the prompt “/imagine.” In my brief demo, it produced compelling high-res photos in a few seconds. Like all of Meta’s AI features being announced this week, this image generation is totally free to use.

Ahmad Al-Dahle, Meta’s VP of generative AI who has been leading the assistant’s development, wouldn’t tell me exactly what it’s trained on. He described it as a “custom-made” large language model that is “based on a lot of the core principles behind Llama 2,” Meta’s latest quasi-open source model that is being quickly adopted across various industries.

From: Meta AI assistant, dozens of AI characters, come to WhatsApp, Instagram – The Verge.

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Yes, the technology to perform the checks has improved (RESTful APIs are nice!), but approval rates are stubbornly stuck in the 85-95% range, and thousands of inaccurate results occur daily. While many folks in the industry have general familiarity with KYC, it also still appears that far fewer have a deep understanding of its nuances.

From: Signals: What you need to know about Know Your Customer.

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EU industry chief Thierry Breton on Tuesday called on Apple (AAPL.O) CEO Tim Cook to open up the iPhone maker’s fiercely guarded ecosystem of hardware and software to rivals.

Breton’s comments came after meeting Cook in Brussels.

“The next job for Apple and other Big Tech, under the DMA (Digital Markets Act) is to open up its gates to competitors,” Breton told Reuters.

“Be it the electronic wallet, browsers or app stores, consumers using an Apple iPhone should be able to benefit from competitive services by a range of providers,” he said.

From: EU’s Breton tells Apple CEO to open its ecosystem to rivals | Reuters.

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Car and van scams surged 74 per cent in the first half of 2023 with victims losing £998 on average in vehicle-related scams, according to new research from Lloyds Bank.

The Ford Fiesta was the most commonly targeted vehicle scam via fake adverts online.

From: Car scams surge 74% in the first six months thanks to fake ads – here’s the motors most likely to be targeted | This is Money.

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The most common way a money mule is contacted is on Instagram, according to Lloyds Bank.

Fraudsters then move the conversation to messaging app WhatsApp — also owned by tech giant Meta.

From: Are your children at risk of being lured into a money mule scam? How criminals are targeting pupils as young as nine to launder cash in alarming numbers | This is Money.

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Currently, to run a resale programme, retailers have to start by retrieving their products from consumers — if they can. Consumers currently have an abundance of places to place inventory, ranging from The RealReal to StockX to Depop. “Digital IDs reduce all the inefficiencies and move products back into brand preferred and profitable resale channels,” Franck explains.

Archive’s Gittins expects digital IDs to become the new norm as brands take ownership of their own resale. “It improves the consumer experience,” she says. “And, we’re seeing more brands want to adopt over time.”

From: Can digital IDs turbocharge resale for brands? Pangaia thinks so | Vogue Business.

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Nine in ten young people are confident they would be able to recognise a suspicious message and identify a fraudulent recruitment, according to the study.

But an undercover investigation revealed that a worrying 66% of university students approached via social media to ‘earn up to £1,000 a day’ responded by sharing their details and engaging with the sender, according to We Fight Fraud’s research.

From: Are your children at risk of being lured into a money mule scam? How criminals are targeting pupils as young as nine to launder cash in alarming numbers | This is Money.

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Compared to older generations, younger generations have reported higher rates of victimization in phishing, identity theft, romance scams, and cyberbullying. The Deloitte survey shows that Gen Z Americans were three times more likely to get caught up in an online scam than boomers were (16 percent and 5 percent, respectively).

From: Gen Z vs. boomers: young adults are victims of online scams more often – Vox.

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The technology makes resale both easy and efficient, says Eon founder Natasha Franck. “With the digital ID, every product is pre-programmed for resale.”

Franck says this new product identification concept is another stage in the development of the so-called internet of things (IoT), in which everyday products become increasingly connected to the web.“It will change how we sell and buy, and how customers interact with their physical products,” she says. “Just as customers go on the internet and buy in one click, now they tap their product and sell it in one click.”

From: Can digital IDs turbocharge resale for brands? Pangaia thinks so | Vogue Business.

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