AI Is Making The Internet's Bot Problem Worse. This $2 Billion Startup Is On The Front Lines

Online fraud and bot attacks pose a significant challenge for businesses. Retailers fight bots hoarding products, banks battle account takeovers, and social media platforms struggle with impersonators. The rise of AI exacerbates this problem, rendering traditional bot detection methods like CAPTCHAs ineffective against sophisticated AI models. This has led to a shift in focus, away from simply identifying bots, and towards understanding the intent and identity of the user, human or AI.

Rick Song, CEO of Persona, an identity verification platform, highlights this shift. Persona serves over 3,000 companies, including OpenAI, LinkedIn, and DoorDash, offering a multi-faceted approach to identity verification. This includes ID uploads, selfies, liveness tests (requiring users to move their faces to prove they are alive), and analysis of risk signals like network usage and online behavior. Persona's machine learning models identify patterns indicative of bot activity, such as repetitive behavior or unnatural input delays.

Persona's recent $200 million Series D funding round reflects its success in creating customizable verification "flows" tailored to specific customer needs and risk levels. This approach contrasts with a "one-size-fits-all" strategy, acknowledging the diverse contexts in which identity verification is required.

The company's clients utilize Persona for various purposes: OpenAI uses it to screen ChatGPT users, Coursera verifies its millions of learners, and DoorDash employs it for background checks on delivery drivers. However, the rise of AI-based attacks presents a substantial threat, with U.S. companies estimated to lose $18 billion to $31 billion annually due to such attacks. Global losses are even higher.

While malicious bots account for a significant portion of automated internet traffic, legitimate bot usage also exists, driven by factors like language barriers or disabilities. Persona aims to strike a balance, avoiding overly restrictive measures when legitimate AI usage can be verified.

Outsourcing identity verification to Persona offers several advantages: it reduces the need for expensive in-house engineering resources, avoids the complexities of storing sensitive user data, and addresses privacy concerns. While Persona has faced lawsuits regarding data collection and use, these have been dismissed.

Persona competes with established players like Clear Secure and Jumio, and newer entrants like Worldcoin. However, the growing threat of deepfakes presents a significant opportunity for Persona, given its sophisticated risk assessment capabilities.

Persona's journey began with a recognition of the limitations of human-based verification processes. Song's experience at Square highlighted the need for a flexible, automated solution. He and his co-founder, Charles Yeh, developed Persona to address this need, creating customizable verification processes that adapt to various business requirements.

Looking ahead, Song anticipates the need for solutions to verify AI agents, suggesting a registration system for bots. For human verification, Persona aims to develop tamper-resistant, reusable identity profiles based on users' online activities, offering a potential solution, albeit with inherent privacy considerations. The ultimate goal is to create a "self-sovereign, personally-owned portable identity."

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