Founder of Nate app faces fraud charge for using "AI" that was really human call center workers

What just happened? There's plenty of debate about the definition of AI, but one thing it certainly isn't is a group of humans working away in the Philippines and Romania. Albert Saniger, the founder and former CEO of shopping app Nate, tried to pass off the work of these flesh-and-blood contractors as AI, and has now been charged with defrauding investors by the DoJ. Saniger launched the Nate app in 2018. It promises to act as a universal shopping cart that simplifies online shopping by enabling users to skip the checkout on any retail website by reducing the process to a single tap. The app was advertised as being powered by AI, with the technology entering billing and shipping information and confirming the purchases. But according to the DoJ, it actually relied heavily on hundreds of human workers mostly located in call centers in the Philippines and Romania to manually complete the transactions. Saniger had also repeatedly made assurances that Nate did not use "dumb bots," but ... Read full article.