NPR found that many of the LinkedIn profiles seem to have a far more mundane purpose: drumming up sales for companies big and small. Accounts like Keenan Ramsey's send messages to potential customers. Anyone who takes the bait gets connected to a real salesperson who tries to close the deal. Think telemarketing for the digital age.
But these computer-generated LinkedIn profile photos illustrate how a technology that has been used to propagate misinformation and harassment online has made its way to the corporate world.From a business perspective, making social media accounts with computer-generated faces has its advantages: It's cheaper than hiring multiple people to create real accounts, and the images are convincing.found faces made by AI have become"indistinguishable" from real faces.
After the Stanford researchers alerted LinkedIn about the profiles, LinkedIn said it investigated and removed those that broke its "In the course of my work, I look at a lot of these things, mostly in the context of political influence operations," DiResta said."But all of a sudden, here was a fake person in my inbox reaching out to me."
Intrigued, DiResta and Goldstein, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford, started scouring LinkedIn for profiles like Ramsey's. A lot of the profiles also sported strikingly similar educational credentials. For example, some claimed to have received bachelor's degrees in business administration — including from schools, such as Columbia University, that don't offer an undergraduate business degree.
RingCentral said it had hired other companies to reach out to potential customers and set up meetings with RingCentral's in-house salespeople — what's known in the business as"lead generation." RingCentral spokesperson Mariana Leventis said in a statement:"While this may have been an industry accepted practice in the past, going forward we do not think this is an acceptable practice, and is counter to our commitment to our customers. We are taking specific steps to update our approach to lead generation and to educate our people on what is and is not acceptable in terms of how we communicate with customers and partners.
AirSales CEO Jeremy Camilloni confirmed that Bob's Containers was a client. He said airSales hires independent contractors to provide marketing services and has"always been clear" with its clients about that.