Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against TikTok claiming the company violated a new child privacy law in the state. It’s set to be the first test of Texas’ Securing Children Online Through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act since it went into effect just over a month ago.

Under the law, parts of which were struck down by a federal judge, social media platforms are required to verify the ages of younger users and offer parental control features, including the ability for parents to opt their children out of data collection.

Paxton alleges that TikTok’s existing parental control features are insufficient. “However, Defendants do not provide the parents or guardians of users known to be 13 to 17 years old with parental tools that allow them to control or limit most of a known minor’s privacy and account settings,” the lawsuit states. “For example, parents or guardians do not have the ability to control Defendants’ sharing, disclosing, and selling of a known minor’s personal identifying information, nor control Defendants’ ability to display targeted advertising to a known minor.”

The lawsuit also argues that the app’s “Family Pairing” tool isn’t “commercially reasonable” because it requires parents to make their own TikTok account and because teens are free to deny their parents’ requests to set up the monitoring tool. TikTok didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The app already prohibits most targeted advertising to anyone younger than 18.

“We strongly disagree with these allegations and, in fact, we offer robust safeguards for teens and parents, including family pairing, all of which are publicly available,” the company said in a statement shared on X. “We stand by the protections we provide families.”

The lawsuit adds to TikTok’s growing legal challenges in the United States. The company is currently fighting a law that could result in a total ban of the app in the United States. It’s also facing a separate Justice Department lawsuit related to child privacy.

Update, October 3, 2024, 8:05 PM ET: This story has been updated to add a statement from TikTok.

Deepfake incidents are surging in 2024, predicted to increase by 60% or more this year, pushing global cases to 150,000 or more. That’s making AI-powered deepfake attacks the fastest-growing type of adversarial AI today. Deloitte predicts deepfake attacks will cause over $40 billion in damages by 2027, with banking and financial services being the primary targets.

AI-generated voice and video fabrications are blurring the lines of believability to hollow out trust in institutions and governments. Deepfake tradecraft is so pervasive in nation-state cyberwarfare organizations that it’s reached the maturity of an attack tactic in cyberwar nations that engage with each other constantly.  

“In today’s election, advancements in AI, such as Generative AI or deepfakes, have evolved from mere misinformation into sophisticated tools of deception. AI has made it increasingly challenging to distinguish between genuine and fabricated information,” Srinivas Mukkamala, chief product officer at Ivanti told VentureBeat.

Sixty-two percent of CEOs and senior business executives think deepfakes will create at least some operating costs and complications for their organization in the next three years, while 5% consider it an existential threat. Gartner predicts that by 2026, attacks using AI-generated deepfakes on face biometrics will mean that 30% of enterprises will no longer consider such identity verification and authentication solutions to be reliable in isolation.

“Recent research conducted by Ivanti reveals that over half of office workers (54%) are unaware that advanced AI can impersonate anyone’s voice. This statistic is concerning, considering these individuals will be participating in the upcoming election,” Mukkamala said.

The U.S. Intelligence Community 2024 threat assessment states that “Russia is using AI to create deepfakes and is developing the capability to fool experts. Individuals in war zones and unstable political environments may serve as some of the highest-value targets for such deepfake malign influence.” Deepfakes have become so common that the Department of Homeland Security has issued a guide, Increasing Threats of Deepfake Identities.

How GPT-4o is designed to detect deepfakes

OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-4o, is designed to identify and stop these growing threats. As an “autoregressive omni model, which accepts as input any combination of text, audio, image and video,” as described on its system card published on Aug. 8. OpenAI writes, “We only allow the model to use certain pre-selected voices and use an output classifier to detect if the model deviates from that.”

Identifying potential deepfake multimodal content is one of the benefits of OpenAI’s design decisions that together define GPT-4o. Noteworthy is the amount of red teaming that’s been done on the model, which is among the most extensive of recent-generation AI model releases industry-wide.

All models need to constantly be training on and learning from attack data to keep their edge, and that’s especially the case when it comes to keeping up with attackers’ deepfake tradecraft that is becoming indistinguishable from legitimate content.

The following table explains how GPT-4o features help identify and stop audio and video deepfakes.

Key GPT-4o capabilities for detecting and stopping deepfakes

Key features of the model that strengthen its ability to identify deepfakes include the following:

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) detection. The same technology that attackers use to create deepfakes, GPT-4o, can identify synthetic content. OpenAI’s model can identify previously imperceptible discrepancies in the content generation process that even GANs can’t fully replicate. An example is how GPT-4o analyzes flaws in how light interacts with objects in video footage or inconsistencies in voice pitch over time. 4o’s GANS detection highlights these minute flaws that are undetectable to the human eye or ear.

GANs most often consist of two neural networks. The first is a generator that produces synthetic data (images, videos or audio) and a discriminator that evaluates its realism. The generator’s goal is to improve the content’s quality to deceive the discriminator. This advanced technique creates deepfakes nearly indistinguishable from real content.

Voice authentication and output classifiers. One of the most valuable features of GPT-4o’s architecture is its voice authentication filter. The filter cross-references each generated voice with a database of pre-approved, legitimate voices. What’s fascinating about this capability is how the model uses neural voice fingerprints to track over 200 unique characteristics, including pitch, cadence and accent. GPT-4o’s output classifier immediately shuts down the process if any unauthorized or unrecognized voice pattern is detected.

Multimodal cross-validation. OpenAI’s system card comprehensively defines this capability within the GPT-4o architecture. 4o operates across text, audio, and video inputs in real time, cross-validating multimodal data as legitimate or not. If the audio doesn’t match the expected text or video context, the GPT4o system flags it. Red teamers found this is especially crucial for detecting AI-generated lip-syncing or video impersonation attempts.

Deepfake attacks on CEOs are growing

Of the thousands of CEO deepfake attempts this year alone, the one targeting the CEO of the world’s biggest ad firm shows how sophisticated attackers are becoming.

Another is an attack that happened over Zoom with multiple deepfake identities on the call including the company’s CFO. A finance worker at a multinational firm was allegedly tricked into authorizing a $25 million transfer by a deepfake of their CFO and senior staff on a Zoom call.

In a recent Tech News Briefing with the Wall Street Journal, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz explained how improvements in AI are helping cybersecurity professionals defend systems while also commenting on how attackers are using it. Kurtz spoke with WSJ reporter Dustin Volz about AI, the 2024 U.S. election and threats posed by China and Russia.

“And if now in 2024 with the ability to create deepfakes, and some of our internal guys have made some funny spoof videos with me and it just to show me how scary it is, you could not tell that it was not me in the video,” Kurtz told the WSJ. “So I think that’s one of the areas that I really get concerned about. There’s always concern about infrastructure and those sort of things. Those areas, a lot of it is still paper voting and the like. Some of it isn’t, but how you create the false narrative to get people to do things that a nation-state wants them to do, that’s the area that really concerns me.”

The critical role of trust and security in the AI era

OpenAI’s prioritizing design goals and an architectural framework that puts defake detection of audio, video and multimodal content at the forefront reflect the future of gen AI models.

“The emergence of AI over the past year has brought the importance of trust in the digital world to the forefront,” says Christophe Van de Weyer, CEO of Telesign. “As AI continues to advance and become more accessible, it is crucial that we prioritize trust and security to protect the integrity of personal and institutional data. At Telesign, we are committed to leveraging AI and ML technologies to combat digital fraud, ensuring a more secure and trustworthy digital environment for all.”

VentureBeat expects to see OpenAI expand on GPT-40’s multimodal capabilities, including voice authentication and deepfake detection through GANs to identify and eliminate deepfake content. As businesses and governments increasingly rely on AI to enhance their operations, models like GPT-4o become indispensable in securing their systems and safeguarding digital interactions.

Mukkamala emphasized to VentureBeat that “When all is said and done, though, skepticism is the best defense against deepfakes. It is essential to avoid taking information at face value and critically evaluate its authenticity.”

We’re out-of-this-world excited to announce that we’ve finalized our dedicated Space Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. It joins Fintech, SaaS and AI as the other industry-focused stages — all under one big roof. To top it off, we’re thrilled to share we’ll be hosting a pitch competition this year called “The Space Challenge, powered by Aerospace” as part of the event.

The full Space Stage agenda at Disrupt 2024

As the space industry accelerates, new opportunities proliferate for founders, investors and customers. Not only are the once-astronomical costs of doing business in orbit falling but so are the technical barriers to entry.

More stakeholders in space make for a lively, diverse and highly competitive environment crossing private and public markets — not to mention the fast-growing dual-use segment. Discover the challenges and possibilities waiting in orbit at Disrupt’s Space Stage, where you’ll hear from leaders across the industry.

Check out the final agenda below — we’ll see you there!

Startups in Dual-Use

with John Gedmark (Astranis), Even Rogers (True Anomaly), Melanie Stricklan (Space Workforce 2030), Tim Solms (Slingshot Aerospace)

Government and defense are relying more and more on commercial services, but startups face a real challenge entering this highly regulated and formal side of the industry. How can young, lean companies compete for contracts and attention with primes and more established organizations — and how can investors help?

Future of Space Operations Startup Challenge

Presented by the Aerospace Corporation

with Cody Bronkar (SpaceWERX), Debra Emmons (The Aerospace Corporation), and Justin Krauss (J.P. Morgan)

TechCrunch and the Aerospace Corporation are once again joining forces for the Space Challenge pitch competition. The contest is designed to foster the growth and development of innovative startups poised to transform commercial space operations. By engaging the founder and innovator community, venture capitalists and the commercial industry, this session will cast a wide net, attracting startups from both the space sector and beyond. Applications are now closed, but this is an event you won’t want to miss.

Peter Beck Takes the Space Industry by the Fins

with Peter Beck (Rocket Lab)

As the founder and CEO of Rocket Lab, Peter Beck is a familiar face to anyone in the space industry. But the company’s ambitions go far beyond its popular Electron launch vehicle: Beck believes that to thrive, perhaps even to survive, space companies will have to become fully integrated one-stop shops. Hear how Rocket Lab is pursuing this ambitious goal.

The Future of Launch

with Kelly Hennig (Stoke Space) and Muhammad “Mo” Shahzad (Relativity Space)

Launch has already been reinvented over the last decade, but why stop there? The demand for space is growing as fast as launch cadences permit, but there is an opportunity beyond making rockets and vehicles. Startups will likely define the future of launch-related software, automation, and operations if these founders have anything to say about it.

Bridgit Mendler on Moving from Disney Star to Startup Founder

with Bridgit Mendler (Northwood Space)

Former Disney Channel star Bridgit Mendler wants to transform one of the least sexy segments of the space industry: ground stations. In this fireside, we’ll learn more about how Northwood Space will build out a data highway between Earth and orbit.

Riding the Wave: The Future of Space Investing

with Lewis Alun Jones (Seraphim Space), Katelin Holloway (Seven Seven Six), Jordan Noone (Embedded Ventures)

Private investments in commercial space companies have exploded over the past few years but investor appetite has been tempered more recently by higher interest rates, turbulent space stock performance and geopolitical uncertainties. In this talk, we’ll discuss the future of space tech investing, which areas are oversaturated or undervalued, and whether this year will be make-it-or-break-it for space startups.

Explore the future of space innovation at Disrupt

TechCrunch Disrupt is where you’ll find innovation for every stage of your startup journey. Whether you’re a budding founder with a revolutionary idea, a seasoned startup looking to scale or an investor seeking the next big thing, TechCrunch Disrupt offers unparalleled resources, connections and expert insights to propel your venture forward. Over 10,000 startup and VC leaders will be attending this year’s event, taking place October 28-30 at Moscone West in San Francisco.

Blast off with us as top space leaders take the stage at Disrupt 2024! Secure your tickets now and be a part of the exploration journey.

The new Expedition, which is first being teased with a drone light show today in Texas, looks like it has only the left half of the Lincoln’s 48-inch pillar-to-pillar panoramic display, leaving behind just a 24-inch panel for the Expedition.

You’re getting the same instrument cluster and navigation combo in front of the driver’s seat, but without the widgets that feature on the right half of the Lincoln’s extended screen. The Expedition’s smaller center touchscreen that lives below it also runs Google Play Store apps, operates Apple CarPlay, and has digital HVAC controls, just like the Lincoln. The car also offers both Google Assistant and Alexa voice assistants (one at a time), and some models offer BlueCruise hands-free driving.

Pillar-to-pillar panoramic screens have become a flashy feature manufacturers have trotted out for their most luxurious vehicles recently. They’ve often been pitched as an infotainment hub for the front passenger, letting them watch streaming videos and even play some PlayStation.

Ford is selling a standard-wheelbase Expedition and an extended “Max” one. In the center row, you have options for bench seating or captain chairs; the backs of the first-row headrests have clamps that can hold smartphones or tablets for passengers in the center row. The Expedition can seat up to eight people with the bench option.

At first glance, the Expedition seems like a copy of the new Lincoln Navigator with its split rear gate, the addition of a light bar up front, and a similar 3.5-liter V6 engine under the hood. (It’s an “EcoBoost” for the Ford.) A new Tremor trim for the Expedition puts out up to 440 horsepower and has tuned suspension and unique trail modes for more off-road capabilities. Like the Navigator, Ford doesn’t offer a hybrid powertrain option in the Expedition, either.