Albert Saniger was accused of fraud after being noted that his application to buy artificial intelligence (AI), NATE, counted on employees of the Philippine Call Center to make purchases manually. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said that Saniger had promoted a “program filled with smoke and mirrors”.
“As presumed, Albert Saniger has misleaded investors by exploiting the promise and attraction of AI technology to build a false story about innovation that never existed,” said Matthew Podolsky, the acting United States prosecutor for the South District of New York.
“This type of deception victim not only innocent investors, but diverts the capital of legitimate startups, makes investors skeptical about the real pierced and ultimately prevents the progress of the development of AI.”
Saniger founded the application in 2018, raising more than $ 50 million in investor financing such as Coatue and Forersner Ventures. More recently, he raised $ 38 million in series A series in 2021, led by Renegade Partners.
He promoted his product to investors and the public as “magic purchase application” which simplified online purchases, because customers could buy items from any e -commerce site with a single tap using the NATE application. Saniger said that the application took care of the rest of the payment process, including billing and shipping information, using AI.
However, according to the Ministry of JusticeThe automation rate of the application “was actually zero percent”. Hundreds of entrepreneurs, or “purchasing assistants”, in a Philippine call center have done the work of the legs and manually finished purchases on the NATE application.
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Previous instances
Saniger is not the only entrepreneur with a startup that would have exaggerated his AI capabilities. According to a report in Initiate of BusinessAI LEGAL Tech Unicorn Welup used humans to do much of his legal work, despite claiming the opposite.
“The former employees said that they had witnessed many problems with IA of ILNUP, including missed injuries, hallucinated medical conditions and visits to the doctor wrongly,” said the report.
Similarly, in 2023, the company driving on AI, AI, Presto Automation was deemed fueled by humans in the Philippines, after claiming to be “one of the largest suppliers of automation technology for industry”.
