The Shift AI Podcast: Taking on Cyberstalking against Women with Certifi CEO Melissa Hutchins

In the most recent Shift AI Podcast, Melissa Hutchins, CEO of Certifi AI, unveiled her company's efforts to protect women and girls from digital harassment. Hutchins' personal experience with cyberstalking has fueled her mission to create AI-driven solutions that detect and prevent online abuse.? Certifi AI is on the cusp of releasing an MVP that promises to revolutionize image authentication. Their proprietary technology will allow users to track and verify the integrity of digital images, a crucial tool in an era of increasingly sophisticated AI-generated content.?

The stark reality of cybercrime prosecution – with only 0.3% of cases resulting in arrests – underscores the urgency of Certify AI's work. Hutchins is dedicated to raising awareness that cyber crimes are not victimless and have real, lasting impacts on individuals.? Looking ahead, Hutchins envisions a future where ethical AI practices are at the forefront of technological advancement. She believes that by building strong safeguards and advocating for underserved groups, we can harness the benefits of AI while mitigating its potential harms.

Certify AI's journey offers valuable insights into how tech startups can address critical societal issues while navigating the challenges of entrepreneurship. It's a powerful example of how personal experiences can drive innovation and create meaningful change in the digital landscape.

Listen below, and continue reading for highlights, edited for context and clarity. Subscribe to the Shift AI Podcast and hear more episodes at ShiftAIPodcast.com.

“At the highest of levels Certifi AI is a tool that takes in, conducts a multi-tier analysis, and detects whether or not an image or video has been modified in some shape or form either the original photo that had been taken, or a completely AI-generated image. And we look at and determine if the content could also be used for malicious purposes, especially when we're talking about women and girls. We're seeing so much of, the impact for them being within non-consensual AI-generated images, sexual exploitation, deep fake porn. Where my personal experience comes into this is I had gone through pretty recently a severe case of cyberstalking and cyber harassment, and this was prior to some of these AI tools becoming very publicly available and accessible.? We're really aiming to provide a trusted detection tool that can advocate for women and girls that are disproportionately impacted by AI manipulated videos and images and just simply can't afford to wait any longer.”

?“Having a personal tie to the problem that you're trying to solve has been the most impactful part for me on those days where it feels really tumultuous and hard and I'm fundraising and I feel like ‘what am I doing wrong? Or is it supposed to be this hard or?’? I think about how low the lows were when I had experienced that form of just every single day you're receiving harmful messages or fake accounts trying to impersonate you deep fake attempts, and I think back to that girl that thought it was never going to end and that girl that just didn't know what to do, didn't have any options. I don't want any other women and girls to have to face that.”

“The two words that I would narrow it down to would be ethical AI ?because we need to be building the foundations of AI with very ethical practices, just very strong, safeguards in place so that we can utilize the amazing benefits of artificial intelligence without having to experience some of those more harmful aspects.”

Listen to the full episode of Shift AI with Certifi AI CEO Melissa Hutchins here.

Boaz Ashkenazy is the founder and CEO of Seattle-based AI solutions provider Augmented AI and the host of the podcast Shift AI.

The Shift AI Podcast is presented by Augmented AI