Combating AI’s Existential Threat to Trust in our Society

Fake identity and false records represent an existential threat to our way of life. Fueled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), we now live in a world where our business partners, employees, customers, and counterparties can be perfectly impersonated and the contracts, authorizations, income statements, and other forms we rely on in our personal and professional lives can be perfectly falsified. As a result, we are all seeing ever more concerning instances of fraud each and every week. 

At Proof, we’ve been at the forefront of digitizing industries for nearly a decade, bringing the housing, auto, financial and legal services, and countless other industries online for the first-time ever. The view from the front lines has been more concerning with every passing year, now worsening every month. 

According to FINCEN, fraudulent activity associated with impersonation and false records are $200 billion and $45 billion problems respectively on an annual basis. These problems dwarf the $18 billion of fraudulent activity associated with money laundering, for which the modern identity verification industry grew up to solve. And yet, while the financial services industry has made leaps securing someone when they open an account through KYC/AML and the regulations are well understood, there is no solution to address these larger problems once someone is already a customer and their assets have been entrusted to you.  

Fraud can occur when someone attempts to withdraw funds, submit a power of attorney, borrow money, authorize business decisions, and falsify financial statements. Attacks are occurring at every single point of interaction with your customers and counterparties. The threat extends across the private and public sectors, with fraudulent actors now submitting false deeds to county recorders to transfer your home right out from under you. Everything is now under constant assault and in desperate need of a solution. 

About five years ago, we noticed that our customers started to leverage Notarize to send us transactions that did not require notarization. They were using our platform to combat fraud. The results were remarkable. For a customer in the recreational vehicle industry, we helped them to identify that 30% of all applications were fraudulent. For another customer in real estate, they started to require every home seller to verify their identity through our platform. And for the country’s largest title underwriters, we’ve helped to reduce fraud across the country. 

About two years ago, we noticed something very concerning. Synthetic identities, deepfakes, and other issues were appearing across our customers’ businesses. Worse, our customers told us they were seeing these issues across their entire organization and customer lifecycle. We set out to work with several of our partners, recasting our entire company and platform to secure every interaction and ultimately renaming ourselves Proof. 

After two years, we’re ready to release a series of capabilities to restore trust and thwart the existential threat brought on by Artificial Intelligence, fake identity, and false records. 

Proof solves three problems:

• Trust the person - Certainty of who you are transacting with
• Trust the transaction - Certainty the transaction was executed properly
• Trust the record - Certainty in the records you hold

Today, we are announcing Proof Certificates to provide certainty in the records you hold. You can read more here.

In an era where everything can be fake and trick even the most discerning eye, we’re creating a future where every interaction and every record can instantly be trusted with Proof. We’re excited to take on this enormous challenge for our partners who rely on our platform to provide trust and certainty in their most important transactions.