BeFake Unveils AI-Powered Social Media Platform

0:00The holidays are here and that means it's the most wonderful time of the year to save with Rakuten. Use Rakuten to stack cashback at your favorite stores on top of holiday sales. That's savings on savings. With Racketing, you get cash back on gifts for everyone on your list. From toys for the kids, to kitchen gear for the person who loves to cook, to electronics for everyone. You can even save on something for yourself. Just shop the stores you love and cash back is automatically added to your account. And you can get paid with gift cards, PayPal or check. or eligible American Express card members can even choose to earn membership rewards points instead of cashback.

0:41It's truly a no-brainer. Join for free today and get a new member bonus after minimum qualifying purchases. Just go to Rakuten.com, download the app, or install the browser extension. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. Terms and conditions apply. What can 160 years of experience teach you about the future? When it comes to protecting what matters, Pacific Life provides life insurance, retirement income, and employee benefits for people and businesses building a more confident tomorrow. Strategies rooted in strength and backed by experience. Ask a financial professional how Pacific Life can help you today. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York.

1:24Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona. Today on the podcast, I want to talk about a brand new AI startup in the social media space. So social media is a notoriously hard realm to really crack into. And there's a new startup called BeFake. So essentially, this is a new social media app, which is kind of pushing the boundaries on digital self expression. That's the idea here. So we're going to dive into it on the podcast and break down what exactly BeFake is, and if we think this is going to be successful. So the first thing I'll say is that this is, you know, it sounds a lot like a play on, you know, the words Be Real, which was a big social media breakthrough that happened kind of last year and into this year as well.

2:06But essentially it would ping a notification on your phone that would say, you know, take a selfie of yourself right now, wherever you are. And it would take a picture of yourself, but also whatever was in front of you. And the goal was and then it would post it to like a story and all your friends would do the same thing and everyone get the notification at the same time. So the idea behind Be Real was that it was, you know, just really, you know, this wasn't these glamorized photo shoots that you do for your Instagram. This was just like a photo you take wherever you're at and just real life.

2:33And, you know, taking the front and back picture was going to show, you know, where you were, what you were doing. And it was just kind of like a, just like a way to show what you were doing. Anyways, this is the opposite of that. This is BeFake, and this is integrating AI technology into everything you're doing. So the tagline of this company is, why be real when you can be fake? Again, just a direct shot at BeReal, I guess. But the app is now available in the App Store and Google Play. And in a recent conversation with GamesBeat, Darcia Dumont shared her thoughts on how BeFake offers a really kind of unconventional twist on the realities that are often depicted in, you know, mainstream social media platforms.

3:19And of course, that is the, Garcia Dumont is the former CEO of MachineZone and is the new CEO of BeFake. So harnessing the power of Alias' technologies, AI capabilities. So Alias Technologies is the company actually creating BFake and actually coming out with this. But kind of harnessing what they are doing here, BFake serves as an enticing platform for users to bolster their social media personas using simple text prompts. And users can essentially, you know, take a picture of themselves and then turn it into a really exciting AI generated image, right? So you'd take a selfie and then you'd say, you know, put me on Mars driving a Mars rover with an alien in the passenger seat.

4:05And it would take that same selfie you took, but, you know, you'd be able to make it all crazy and AI-ified, right? So talking to the CEO, she said, quote, BeFake is ushering in a transformative area in social media engagement intertwined with the increasing influence of AI. This isn't just an app, it's a vibrant platform for exploring new avenues of interaction through AI forged visuals. We're of the view that genuineness can be echoed in fantasies as much as in realities. That's a fairly interesting perspective, I'd say. In any ways, I'd say contrary to kind of mainstream social media content, BFake's kind of AI driven visuals are, they're really intriguing and I think they inspire some interesting thought.

4:51garcia dumont emphasized um that she believes that this actually inspires deeper thought into our lives um the platform promotes a really unique mode of communicating which essentially just encouraging users to go deeper into their identities beyond tangible realms so it also sets the stage for a friendly immersion into the world of ai this is going to obviously be a way that a lot of people are using this something that this makes me think of right because um i can't help but think that an app like BeFake is going to be really interesting, particularly to Gen Z and younger audiences, kind of like how TikTok initially grabbed younger audiences.

5:31And I think that this kind of brings up the concept that these younger audiences are literally going to be growing up with AI in their pocket, whether that's their social media, whether that's ChatGPT, whether that's MidJourney. There's a whole generation growing up right now that has very easy access to AI and it's not going to seem as crazy as to many people that have lived much longer without it. So I think this is just going to be a really interesting paradigm shift and cultural shift that is going to play out in the future. So Garcia Dumont really is quite passionate about this new project and she explained her intent behind the platform saying, quote, my aim is to dismantle the walls, hindering human connection.

6:11I'm convinced that AI can level the social media playing field, alleviating the anxieties many of us face when posting. While genuine candid posts have their place, our vision is distinct. Users yearn for aspirational content showcasing their finest selves online. BeFake enables users to seamlessly augment any moment using AI sharing their inventive side. So this is really, really interesting and I'm not sure if this is, I'm not sure if this is really going to help with the mental health crisis that's evidently caused by social media or if it's going to hinder it. I guess it's got to be left to seen if, you know, like a lot of people complain that Instagram makes everyone look glamorized and perfect.

6:55And I guess in a way, something like Instagram, which is, you know, posed as this is reality but in reality everything on there is you know fake enhanced um you know photoshopped most of what's on there so i think it's kind of interesting now that we have this platform that's launching called be fake and to be fair i think this is good because at least everyone knows that everything on this platform is fake right if everything's ai generated everyone looks perfect or great or however they want to look or they look like they're you know a dwarf warrior whatever right? It's fake and everyone knows it's fake.

7:30Whereas Photoshop is mostly fake, or I mean, sorry, Instagram is mostly fake, but everyone thinks it's real. So I guess in that sense, it's probably helpful for mental health, but I guess it's left to be seen. So BeFake has a user-centric design. Essentially, they are, you know, say that they are letting their user's creativity flow but on the topic of her professional journey garcia dumont who's now the ceo of bfake was previously at the helm of a mobile gaming company machine zone which is responsible for hits like game of war and mobile strike and having overseen the creation of two globally successful mobile social games that generated over a billion dollars her transition to alias technologies um post apple 11's acquisition of machine zone was marked by her assembling a team of ai enthusiasts and really focusing on generative AI.

8:27So rather than revisiting the game arena, Garcia Dumont really envisioned a whole paradigm shift around AI and social interactions. And that is where, you know, this new technology has come from. So I think it's going to be really interesting. This company is financially backed by Coastal Ventures, Next Coast Ventures, Joe Lionsdale and they've built out a pretty solid team. So I think they have some room to grow here. I think they have a lot of potential and it's definitely a company we'll be watching to see if they have product market fit and what the user adoption is in the future.