After a deepfake voice fooled her grandfather, this founder sprang into action
DetectifAI builds on-device deepfake voice detection after its founder's grandfather was scammed by an AI voice.
San Francisco startup DetectifAI, founded by Tarini Padmanabhuni after a deepfake voice ransom fooled her grandfather, is building compact models that run on smartphones to judge whether a voice is AI-generated. The FBI says Americans lost nearly $900 million to AI-driven scams last year, up 24% from 2024. DetectifAI licenses an SDK to phone makers and says it already processes more than 100,000 calls a month for unnamed financial institutions in India. It has raised a small seed round and will compete in TechCrunch Startup Battlefield.
46