The horribly realistic surge in deepfakes is one of the more harmful by-products of the rise of AI, and victims of these deepfake-based frauds already cost millions of dollars. The startup, which has built a set of tools aimed at governments and businesses, has helped to detect and stop deepfakes and spoofing in audio, video and still images, led by impressive customers and investors on Wednesday.
Co-founded by Hany Farid, one of the pioneers of Deepfake Media's detection, GetReal has raised $17.5 million in stake and funds for use in R&D, employment and business development.
In addition to the funding, the company is launching a forensic platform as a service. This includes integrations to perform web interfaces, APIs, and media analytics as a service. Features include the Threat Exposure Dashboard. An “inspection” tool aimed at preventing prominent executives from being spoofed. A “protective” tool for screening media. “Respons” involves a team of GetReal's human beings who do deeper analysis.
Cybersecurity and AI specialist Forge Point Capital has joined the Series A with ballistic ventures, evolution equity and K2 Access Funds.
Ballistic is a key company on that list. GetReal was incubated in VC from 2022 until it emerged from stealth in June 2022. The ballistics also led GetReal's $7 million seed.
For another reason, trajectory is important. The company's founder, Ted Shrine, is chairman and co-founder of GetReal. Before the ballistics, Schlein led Kleiner Perkins.
Honey as a Service
GetReal is located in the wider world of cybersecurity, particularly in the rapidly evolving region of cyberphone chic. The market gap that San Mateo-based startups are addressing is the lack of talent and knowledge in the field.
“If you think there's a lack of people in cybersecurity, prepare for forensics,” said Matt Moynahan, CEO of GetReal.
Moynahan is not the founder of a startup. He came to GetReal while still stealth shortly after a three-year career leading a range of major cybersecurity companies, including Symantec, Arbor Networks, Veracode and ForcePoint.
“To be honest, I don't think I've seen this ubiquitous threat,” he said of his ability to create and apply malicious deepfakes.
He compared the virus and described it as a “new threat.” “What we've seen over the last 20 years is the threat of moving towards end users,” he said. “Fun” apps that allow people to create deepfakes are part of the problem, but so are the environments we work today. “People have now gone from bricks and mortar to almost entirely digital and cloud companies.”
Fishing proved that even very clever people can easily be fooled and brought everything together, he said.
GetReal is the brainchild of Farid, a long-established academic (now Berkeley, California), considered a pioneer in techniques for identifying digital images when they become doctors. Without a doubt, Farid understood the risks of deepfakes before the term existed.
As Farid explained it to TechCrunch, while working primarily as an academic and researcher, he has applied his learning informally for years as a service to media organizations, legal teams (after digital image was recognized in court) and others. In 2022 he came with Shrine to explore how to convert it into a real business and turned that research process into code.
“No one is staring at this, like Honey would,” Moynahan said. “But honey can't expand, so I basically took the han and tried to create a 'honey service' in the cloud. ”
Interestingly, Farid says the technology under development depends on the mechanisms of new apps, but on the plenty of reverse engineering that will be done with GetReal.
“There's a technique I developed 20 years ago and it still works today,” he said. He refused to explain what they were. “You don't have to tell people everything we do, but getting right is complicated.”
Signal Effect: Text is still coming
Series A, announced Wednesday, also includes several key strategic backers, including Cisco Investments, Capital One Ventures, In-Q-Tel, and investment companies closely associated with the CIA.
That strategic list, Alberto Ipez, co-founder of Forge Point, who led the investment, said it reflects the list of strategists and that it is beginning to adopt GetReal's products.
During his due diligence, Yépez discovered that heavily regulated industries such as financial institutions were already seeking such products, and the CISO had reached out to delegates from the board of directors.
“They raised the issue [of deepfaked impersonations] After their CEOs were put in a voice interview, they were spoofed and fooled by impersonation. Named customers include John Deere and Visa.
Regarding government work, Yépez said, “They have some priorities in this space.”
These “priorities” include intelligence reporting agencies and government officials not being fooled or acted by their acting based on fake information from bad actors.
But they still need to extend to text-based spoofing.
It only appeared this week when Atlantic editors were accidentally added to a signal group chat planning a military attack in Yemen – first assuming it was a spoofing hoax. To my surprise, the chat was found to be very realistic and violate national security procedures.
Farid said the text is currently not within GetReal's scope. “It's another beast,” he said. But in the long run, the plan is to expand the scope over time to include all sorts of deepfalk and spoofing threats.