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Marketing tech in financial services

Marketing technology (martech) in financial services has witnessed significant evolution in recent years, transforming the way financial institutions engage with customers and prospects. From personalized messaging to data analytics, the integration of technology into marketing strategies has revolutionized the industry landscape. The impact of marketing tech on financial services has far-reaching implications for both businesses and consumers.

One of the most notable advancements in marketing technology within financial services is the use of data analytics. Financial institutions now have access to vast amounts of customer data, ranging from transaction history to online behavior. By leveraging sophisticated analytics tools, banks and other financial service providers can analyze these data to gain valuable insights into customer preferences, behaviors, and needs. For example, banks can use predictive analytics to anticipate customer needs and offer personalized product recommendations. This enables them to deliver targeted marketing messages that resonate with individual customers, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.

Moreover, marketing automation has become increasingly prevalent in the financial services sector. Automation tools allow financial institutions to streamline their marketing processes and deliver relevant content to customers at the right time. For instance, e-mail marketing automation platforms enable banks to send personalized e-mails based on customer behavior, such as abandoned cart reminders or product recommendations. By automating repetitive tasks, financial institutions can free up resources and focus on strategic initiatives, improving efficiency and effectiveness.

The views expressed herein are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of his office as well as FINEX.

In addition to data analytics and automation, artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing marketing in financial services. AI-powered chatbots, for example, are being deployed by banks to provide personalized assistance to customers 24/7. These chatbots can answer usual questions, provide account information, and even offer financial advice based on the customer’s financial goals and preferences. By leveraging AI, financial institutions can enhance customer satisfaction and reduce the burden on human customer service agents.

Furthermore, social media has emerged as a powerful marketing tool for financial services companies. Platforms like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and LinkedIn offer unique opportunities for banks to engage with customers and prospects in real time. For instance, banks can use social media to share educational content, provide customer support, and even run targeted advertising campaigns. Using social media, financial institutions can increase brand awareness, foster customer loyalty, and generate leads more effectively.

The rise of mobile technology has also transformed the way financial services are marketed to consumers. Mobile banking applications allow customers to access their accounts, make payments, and manage their finances on the go. Financial institutions can leverage these apps to deliver personalized marketing messages based on the user’s location, transaction history, and preferences. For example, a bank could send a push notification to a customer offering a special promotion at a nearby branch. By harnessing the power of mobile technology, financial institutions can reach customers wherever they are, driving engagement and loyalty.

Personalization has likewise become a cornerstone of effective marketing in the financial services industry. Today’s consumers expect personalized experiences tailored to their unique needs and preferences. Financial institutions can achieve this by leveraging customer data to deliver targeted marketing messages across multiple channels. For example, banks can use dynamic content to personalize website experiences based on the user’s demographics, browsing history, and past interactions. By delivering relevant content to the right audience, financial institutions can increase engagement, drive conversions, and build stronger customer relationships.

The adoption of martech has also opened new opportunities for collaboration and partnerships within the financial services ecosystem. For example, banks may partner with fintech companies to leverage their innovative technologies and reach new customer segments. By collaborating with fintech startups, traditional financial institutions can tap into innovative marketing tools and techniques, such as blockchain-based loyalty programs or robo-advisors. These partnerships not only drive innovation but also enable financial institutions to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market.

Moreover, regulatory compliance remains a critical consideration for financial institutions when implementing marketing technology. As financial services become increasingly digitized, regulators are paying closer attention to how customer data is collected, stored, and used for marketing purposes. Financial institutions must ensure that their marketing practices comply with relevant regulations, such as General Data Protection Regulation  or GDPR and California Consumer Privacy Act or CCPA, to avoid fines and penalties. By prioritizing data privacy and security, financial institutions can build trust with customers and maintain a positive reputation in the market.

In summary, martech has transformed the financial services industry, enabling financial institutions to deliver personalized experiences, streamline marketing processes, and reach customers more effectively. From data analytics and automation to AI-powered chatbots and social media, technology has revolutionized the way financial services are marketed to consumers. Embracing these advancements and prioritizing regulatory compliance will allow financial institutions to stay ahead of the curve and drive growth in an increasingly competitive market landscape.

 

Reynaldo C. Lugtu, Jr. is the founder and CEO of Hungry Workhorse, a digital, culture, and customer experience transformation consulting firm. He is a fellow at the US-based Institute for Digital Transformation. He is the chair of the Digital Transformation IT Governance Committee of FINEX Academy. He teaches strategic management and digital transformation in the MBA Program of De La Salle University. The author may be e-mailed at rey.lugtu@hungryworkhorse.com

Behind the OnlyFans porn boom: allegations of rape, abuse and betrayal

MIAMI — Sammy remembers nearly every detail of the night in April 2022 when she says two men raped her.

The Miami apartment, stark and empty, where it happened. The loud music as she screamed and told them to stop. The fear and the pain, the overwhelming sense of powerlessness.

Sammy, recalling the night in an interview, also remembers seeing a phone perched on a dresser and thinking: Am I being filmed?

Two months later, on June 30, an edited recording of Sammy’s alleged assault was posted on OnlyFans, a website where people can create porn and charge for it. The video was marketed by one of her alleged assailants as “train” sex, jargon for multiple men having sex with one woman, according to screenshots obtained by Reuters.

“The full train video is here guys,” he said on OnlyFans. “Who wants it?”

OnlyFans is an adults-only website where anyone — celebrities, porn stars, cash-strapped moms, and aspiring influencers — can sell sexually explicit videos of themselves. Top earners make millions of dollars a year. Created in 2016, OnlyFans now boasts almost 240 million users and has achieved mainstream fame. Beyoncé namechecked it in a song lyric. Rapper Iggy Azalea said it had brought her a small fortune.

But other people have reaped pain, not profit. They describe lives upended after sexually explicit content featuring them was posted and sold on OnlyFans without their consent. Some videos, like Sammy’s, involve alleged sexual assault. Law enforcement has struggled to monitor such nonconsensual pornography on the website, while victims often have limited legal recourse.

OnlyFans says it is building “the safest social media platform in the world.” But a Reuters investigation identified 128 cases in which women and men complained to US law enforcement agencies that sexual content featuring them ended up on OnlyFans without their permission — and was often sold for profit — between January 2019 and November 2023.

Under public records laws, Reuters sought documents on cases involving OnlyFans from more than 250 of the largest law enforcement agencies in the United States — the platform’s biggest market. Fifty-six of them produced records in which people complained of explicit, nonconsensual posts on OnlyFans. Reuters also interviewed police officers, prosecutors, legal experts and nine people who said their sexual images appeared without their consent.

Most of the 128 police complaints were lodged by women against men who were former sex partners. They often said the content was produced consensually but was posted without their permission — or even their knowledge. In about 40% of the complaints, the videos also appeared on other popular social media sites, usually as snippets to promote lengthier and more explicit material for sale on OnlyFans.

The cases highlight how technology has transformed modern relationships and the porn industry. Today, anyone with a cellphone and an internet connection can make and distribute sexual videos and images. Filming and sharing these is now an accepted part of many intimate encounters — so long as it’s a lovers’ secret. Posting those videos online, however, can feel like a major betrayal. It can also be illegal.

Some women said their unwanted appearance on OnlyFans had nearly destroyed their lives.

“A whole company has made money off of my biggest trauma,” said Sammy, 21, in her first public comments on the case. She requested that her full name be withheld.

In Texas, a woman described being forced to install a home security system after being harassed by stalkers who saw an OnlyFans video of her that went viral. A Nebraska woman said she struggled to go out in public, terrified that people might recognize her from a sex video her ex-boyfriend was selling on OnlyFans for $15. An Illinois woman said she learned that naked images of herself were circulating from her teenage daughter, who saw them online.

In response to a detailed account of Reuters’ findings, an OnlyFans spokesperson said that “in the few examples where bad actors have misused our platform,” OnlyFans “removed the content swiftly, banned the user and actively supported investigations and prosecutions.”

Sammy, a college student from Florida, has filed the first lawsuit under US federal sex-trafficking laws against OnlyFans.

The spokesperson said OnlyFans had reviewed the cases of Sammy and others described in this report and found that those accounts were deleted either by OnlyFans moderators or the creators themselves. Those deletions sometimes occurred a year or longer after women complained to police, a Reuters review of police records and account information from OnlyFans found.

The spokesperson didn’t elaborate on the cases but said OnlyFans tightened its consent verification procedures in late 2022. The company requires “proof of identification and consent from all individuals featured in any explicit content uploaded to our platform, and we moderate all uploaded content,” she said.

She declined to respond to questions about how explicit content of non-consenting adults could have ended up on the site when OnlyFans says it moderates everything.

Combining social media glamor and the business of sex, OnlyFans casts itself as a new breed of adult website. Most big porn sites offer content for free and make money mainly from advertising. At OnlyFans, revenue is generated by its 3.2 million creators, most of them amateurs. They sell content to their subscribers, or “fans,” usually for a monthly fee of between $4.99 and $50. One-off sales of videos and images through the site’s direct-messaging function can be even more lucrative.

The terms are attractive for OnlyFans creators: They keep 80% of their fans’ payments. For OnlyFans, which takes the rest, it’s a goldmine. According to the most recent filing by its British parent company, Fenix International, OnlyFans’ pre-tax profit in 2022 reached $525 million — almost a hundred-fold increase in just three years. Revenue expanded at least twenty-fold to more than $1 billion.

OnlyFans doesn’t know how many of its creators are making “adult content,” the spokesperson has said. The platform says it also features sports, music, and other non-explicit material.

Beyond the United States, OnlyFans has also seen explosive growth — along with allegations of abuse against celebrities and other content creators.

In Australia, a Queensland man faces trial after being accused of filming himself raping his unconscious girlfriend in 2021 and uploading the video to OnlyFans, according to court records. The man hasn’t entered a plea, a court official said. In Thailand, a married couple was arrested in October on suspicion of drugging and raping four women and a 17-year-old girl, then selling videos of the acts on OnlyFans, Thai police said. The couple hasn’t entered a plea but denied the rape charges, police said. In Romania, former kickboxer Andrew Tate is awaiting trial on rape and sex-trafficking charges connected to running an operation that allegedly forced women to create porn for OnlyFans, said Romanian prosecutors. Mr. Tate denies the charges.

In Britain, Stephen Bear, a former reality show contestant, was sentenced in March 2022 to 21 months in jail after posting a sex video of his ex-girlfriend on OnlyFans without her permission. Mr. Bear, who denied all charges, was released in January after serving half his sentence. He didn’t respond to a request for comment. Reuters documented another 17 cases in Britain in which people had complained to UK authorities of nonconsensual porn appearing on OnlyFans, according to public records obtained from the country’s police forces.

Despite the attention generated by high-profile cases, law enforcement officials say the sheer size of OnlyFans and the paywalls surrounding its individual creators have made it nearly impossible to monitor systematically. OnlyFans is largely a black box to outsiders, much less accessible than social media sites like Instagram, X and Facebook.

The paywall “absolutely, unequivocally adds a barrier,” said Joseph Scaramucci, a deputy sheriff in Texas who formerly worked on a US Department of Homeland Security anti-human trafficking task force. Some law enforcement agencies won’t subscribe to OnlyFans accounts due to budgetary constraints, he said.

There are other reasons perpetrators of nonconsensual porn aren’t held to account, Reuters found. Some people were reluctant to press charges against former lovers. Police often lack expertise in gathering technical evidence of cybercrimes or view the cases as low-priority misdemeanors. Women can be hesitant to share explicit images with male police and prosecutors.

No federal law specifically criminalizes nonconsensual porn. It has been prosecuted under federal anti-trafficking statutes in at least three cases — none of which involved OnlyFans. Complaints typically are handled by local authorities enforcing a patchwork of state laws, and they usually focus on individuals who post abusive content, not on the sites that host it.

OnlyFans chief executive officer Keily Blair has said that “100%” of content is reviewed by human moderators aided by artificial intelligence. But the cases documented by Reuters, including the video of Sammy’s alleged rape, point to significant gaps in this system.

“The victim is clearly saying no” in the video, said Todd Falzone, a lawyer for Sammy. “So if they were really moderating that video, they would have seen and heard that.”

Her alleged assailants, Michelson Romelus and Bendjy Charles, face charges of sexual battery and distributing obscene material. They have pleaded not guilty.

Separately, in federal court in Florida, Sammy is suing the two men — and OnlyFans. Her lawsuit is the first to take on the platform itself under a federal sex-trafficking law that prohibits companies from financially benefiting from commercial sex abuses, according to a Reuters review of court filings and interviews with legal experts. Sammy’s sex-trafficking claim is part of a growing number of lawsuits by people who accuse social media sites of profiting from abusive sexual content. The suits could signal a reckoning for OnlyFans and others in the industry, said five lawyers who specialize in porn and sex-trafficking cases.

“The legal landscape has shifted,” said Julie Dahlstrom, a human trafficking expert at Boston University School of Law. “You’ve seen judges interpreting trafficking laws more expansively,” and “lawyers and survivors understanding that they can bring those cases.”

NO FACE, NO CASE
For some people, the shock of seeing their naked images on OnlyFans was followed by a futile fight for justice.

Amanda Dicrosta’s battle began in Florida in February 2022, when she walked into the Tampa Police Department to file a sexual cyber-harassment complaint against her ex-boyfriend, Mike McFarland, a former player for the National Football League’s Indianapolis Colts. “I was just hoping that they would take me seriously,” she said.

The two had dated for about a year and then split up. Mr. McFarland afterward posted videos of them having sex on his OnlyFans and Twitter accounts without her permission, she told police.

Ms. Dicrosta, 28, told police that Mr. McFarland recorded some of the sex videos without her knowledge or consent. She knew other videos existed but said the couple had an understanding that those were private.

When Ms. Dicrosta first learned in June 2020 that Mr. McFarland, 32, had posted the videos on OnlyFans, she confronted him, and he initially took down the videos, she wrote in a sworn police statement. But in August 2021, when she revisited McFarland’s OnlyFans account, she discovered not just those videos but also new ones recorded without her knowledge, she told police.

When she saw videos of her advertised on OnlyFans for $5 each, she felt sick. Mr. McFarland had “exposed my entire body for $5,” Ms. Dicrosta told Reuters. “I can’t even buy a full meal at McDonald’s for $5.”

Ms. Dicrosta said she contacted Mr. McFarland again. This time, he refused to take down the videos, she told police.

On Twitter, Mr. McFarland posted snippets of the videos with links to his OnlyFans account, according to screenshots Ms. Dicrosta provided to Reuters and police. Another ex-boyfriend recognized her body in the videos and shared them with friends, some of whom assumed she was now in the business of “doing porn,” she said.

Mr. McFarland told police that Ms. Dicrosta knew the recordings would be posted on OnlyFans and Twitter. “It was with her consent,” he told Reuters. “I have nothing to lie about.”

X, as Twitter has been renamed, declined to comment on Ms. Dicrosta’s case but said it works to limit sensitive adult content from being shared.

After consulting with the state attorney’s office, police told Ms. Dicrosta the case couldn’t be prosecuted. The videos showed her private parts, underwear, and a bathing suit – but not her face. For the case to proceed in court, the police report said, the videos had to include information that more specifically identified her.

Police closed Ms. Discrosta’s case in July 2022 and told her they’d reopen it if she located any such videos.

“I felt hopeless,” she said. “Do I just need to strip naked and show you my naked body for you to believe me? What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to prove to you that this is me?”

To violate Florida law, explicit images shared nonconsensually must contain “personal identification information,” such as unique physical attributes.

Mary Anne Franks, a professor at the George Washington University Law School in Washington D.C., studies the issue of nonconsensual porn and is familiar with Florida’s law. After reviewing Ms. Dicrosta’s case at Reuters’ request, she said the case could have been prosecuted because there was enough context of Dicrosta in the video to allow someone — in this case, a former boyfriend — to recognize her.

The case speaks to a broader problem, Ms. Franks said: Not all police departments are familiar with the nuances of laws on nonconsensual porn, especially as some laws are relatively new.

A Tampa police spokesperson said that detectives “dedicated over five months to the investigation,” but the evidence did “not meet the criteria to establish a criminal violation.”

Ms. Dicrosta felt angry and let down. She thought about the “personal identification information” demanded by Florida law and came up with another way to protect herself in case a sexual partner secretly filmed her in the future.

She walked into a tattoo parlor and had the words “not yours” etched on her backside.

BARRIERS TO PROSECUTION
Ms. Dicrosta’s experience illustrates the long odds of holding people who post nonconsensual porn to account.

Of the 128 US cases Reuters documented, only 28 ended in an arrest and eight resulted in any sort of criminal conviction. Three people went to jail — two for 48 hours each.

Police closed 90 of the cases, including nine for lack of evidence, 12 because investigative leads were exhausted, and 10 because the accusers decided not to pursue charges. The other 38 remained open, including 15 cases marked as “inactive.”

Police documented some cases for “informational purposes only” when the accusers didn’t want to pursue charges but wanted a record of the incident.

Forty-eight states, Washington D.C., Guam, and Puerto Rico have criminalized nonconsensual porn in the past two decades. But many laws have loopholes or are weakly enforced, according to lawyers, academics and victim advocates. Repeated efforts by the US Congress to pass federal laws that criminalize nonconsensual porn have failed, largely due to objections by free-speech advocates.

Thirty-eight states classify the sharing of nonconsensual porn as misdemeanors, a low-priority crime for some police departments. Some investigators blame the victims for allowing themselves to be filmed, said Ms. Franks, the law professor.

“There’s not much sympathy for victims to begin with,” she said.

Many of the state laws now used to fight nonconsensual porn are designed to combat “revenge porn,” in which someone posts explicit images to retaliate against a former partner. But in the OnlyFans cases documented by Reuters, the motive often isn’t just retribution. It’s money.

That’s a barrier to prosecutions in some jurisdictions.

In Florida’s Okaloosa County, a man contacted the sheriff’s office in September 2022 after discovering his ex-girlfriend posted a sex video of them on OnlyFans without his permission. Under Florida law, however, the video must be published with intent to cause “substantial emotional distress.”

“Although the victim expressed emotional distress, the intent of the suspect was financial gain, and therefore the elements of this crime have not been met,” the investigating detective said in the case report, which redacted the man’s name.

Police dropped the case.

‘IT NEVER ENDS’
Many OnlyFans creators rely on other social media to promote their content to potential subscribers. Some videos on OnlyFans are published or leaked on other porn sites. And some are disseminated so widely that victims are powerless to stop them.

Adreiona Prater said she was caught in a viral nightmare.

Ms. Prater was 18 when a sex video of her appeared on OnlyFans and other websites. She was attending junior college, studying criminal justice, in Tyler, Texas, in July 2019, when she met and briefly dated Anthony Reshon Scott, then 20.

MS. Prater said she reluctantly allowed Mr. Scott to record them having sex but afterward asked him to delete the video. Mr. Scott assured her he did, she told police.

In February 2020, Ms. Prater discovered the video on Pornhub, another big porn site, and contacted Tyler police. She said she dropped the case after Mr. Scott promised to take the video down, but later discovered it on OnlyFans. She watched helplessly as it took off on social media.

On Oct. 6, 2020, a clip appeared on Mr. Scott’s Twitter account, revealing her face and naked body, police records show. The caption read, “Check out my onlyfans with over 200+ girls,” and provided a link to Mr. Scott’s OnlyFans page. An eight-minute version was also posted to Reddit by an anonymous user, watermarked with the address of Mr. Scott’s OnlyFans account.

In comments under the Reddit post, someone identified Ms. Prater by posting her social media information, according to screenshots she shared with police. On Instagram, one person asked her: “That was you in that onlyfans vid?”

After being harassed by online stalkers, Ms. Prater said she installed a home security system, changed her phone number and called police again, this time in Arlington, Texas, where she’d recently moved.

“I just felt so scared,” she said.

An Arlington police detective investigating Ms. Prater’s report ran into a problem: the OnlyFans paywall. It required a $5 monthly subscription fee. “So I was unable to view the contents,” Detective Jacklyn Donalson wrote in a case report.

Ms. Donalson told Reuters she knew from experience that it would be tough to convince her superiors to pay for a porn subscription, especially when there was no guarantee it would provide usable evidence.

“Like all government agencies, our resources are finite,” said Tim Ciesco, spokesperson for the Arlington Police Department. “We have to be strategic about the way we disperse them.”

The case might have stalled there. Without a subscription, there’s almost no public information on OnlyFans accounts available to investigators. Some seek subpoenas to force OnlyFans to disclose account information, but that involves persuading a court that it’s relevant to an investigation.

In Ms. Prater’s case, however, Ms. Donalson said she ultimately was able to document enough evidence of a crime without Mr. Scott’s OnlyFans information because the video appeared on other platforms, including Twitter.

Spokespeople for Reddit and X didn’t comment on Ms. Prater’s case but said their platforms strictly prohibit nonconsensual porn. Pornhub operator Aylo said it “expeditiously” removed the video when it learned about it.

In August 2021, a Tarrant County grand jury indicted Mr. Scott for violating Texas’ “revenge porn” law, a felony. The jury cited his Twitter post that advertised his OnlyFans page.

In a conversation that Ms. Prater recorded and submitted to police, Mr. Scott told her he would pay her to drop the charges, according to the recording, which Reuters reviewed. This time, Ms. Prater refused.

Mr. Scott pleaded guilty in June 2022 to publishing intimate visual material without Ms. Prater’s consent, and received three years of community supervision, akin to probation. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Mr. Scott said in an interview. “I want to leave it at that.”

As police investigated her case, Ms. Prater wrote to OnlyFans on Feb. 23, 2021, to complain about the video and give them the name of Mr. Scott’s OnlyFans account. The company replied the next day, saying the video would be removed if confirmed to be nonconsensual, according to a screenshot of the message that Ms. Prater shared with Reuters.

“We take all reports of this nature extremely seriously,” a help desk representative wrote to her.

Ms. Prater said she never heard from OnlyFans again.

According to OnlyFans, the complaint contained “no actionable information.” The company did not elaborate but told Reuters its moderators deactivated the account in April 2022 — more than a year after Ms. Prater’s takedown request.

Versions of the sex video remain online, the OnlyFans watermark still visible.

“I still get harassed about it to this day,” Prater said. “It never ends.”

‘MY HEART DROPPED. IT WAS ME’
The surge of pornography unleashed by OnlyFans and other websites in the smartphone era is reminiscent of the “Golden Age of Porn,” a period in the 1970s and 1980s when another technological advance — home video players — brought porn to a much wider audience.

As the porn market expands, turbo-charged by social media, so does the challenge of verifying consent.

OnlyFans’ terms of service say creators must have documents to prove the age, identity, and consent of other people who appear in their content, unless OnlyFans has already vetted those people as creators too. But multiple creators said in interviews that they have uploaded porn featuring others without providing that proof.

The OnlyFans spokesperson said the company strengthened procedures in late 2022 to require proof of consent before creators could post content on the platform. Yet Reuters found more than a dozen cases filed with US law enforcement agencies in 2023 in which people alleged that explicit videos or images were posted without their consent.

In addition, of the nine people Reuters interviewed who said they were victims of nonconsensual porn, all said they were never asked for documents.

“Even if you have content moderation rules that are fairly clear against nonconsensual intimate images, those rules are abused regularly,” said Danielle Citron, a University of Virginia School of Law professor who has studied online abuse on porn platforms.

While CEO Keily Blair pledges that OnlyFans monitors 100% of content, the terms of service say the company has no obligation to do so: “We are not responsible for reviewing or moderating Content.”

The company spokesperson didn’t address the apparent inconsistency but said: “We know the legal identity of all our creators and work closely with law enforcement around the world. This approach means OnlyFans is an extremely hostile environment for anyone” seeking to share nonconsensual sexual content, she said.

Some women said they were only able to confirm suspicions or rumors of their appearance on OnlyFans by buying access to images or videos of themselves.

Jennifer Aviles told police she initially heard about the explicit videos of herself from her 15-year-old daughter. The teen discovered Twitter posts by Ms. Aviles’ ex-boyfriend, William Lewis, that advertised his OnlyFans account with images of her face and body.

“I got my only fans set up if y’all want to see some really GOOD STUFF,” Mr. Lewis tweeted on Oct. 18, 2020.

“I looked at it and my heart dropped. It was me,” Ms. Aviles, 40, of Woodstock, Illinois, recalled in an interview.

Ms. Aviles knew that explicit images and videos had been taken during their eight-year relationship. “I enjoyed being recorded, then watching afterwards,” she said. “I think it’s why most people consent to do intimate videos.”

But she told police that she had asked Mr. Lewis to delete the images after they broke up. “Being vulnerable like that involves a lot of trust. Little did I know years later it would haunt me.”

Wanting to know exactly what Mr. Lewis had posted of her on his OnlyFans page, she paid for a $50 monthly subscription to his account, she said. She discovered photos and videos of her naked body and of her engaged in sexual acts with Mr. Lewis.

Ms. Aviles called the Woodstock Police Department.

On Aug. 29, 2021, a detective brought Mr. Lewis, 41, to the police station for questioning. During the videotaped interview, which Reuters reviewed, Mr. Lewis initially denied posting explicit material of Aviles on OnlyFans or Twitter. Then he said he couldn’t remember. Then he broke down in tears. “I’m hoping this doesn’t ruin the rest of my life,” he said.

In May 2022, Mr. Lewis pleaded guilty to one count of nonconsensual dissemination of a sexual image — a felony. He received 24 months of probation.

“I am remorseful,” Mr. Lewis told Reuters. “I do feel bad about putting it out there into the universe.”

OnlyFans confirmed it responded to a police inquiry about Aviles’ case in March 2021 and that the account had been deleted the previous November. X didn’t comment on the case but says it bans non-consensual nudity on the platform.

Far from giving consent, 11 women and five men involved in the cases reviewed by Reuters told police they had no idea that images featured on OnlyFans even existed until after they had been posted. Each said the videos had been recorded without their knowledge.

Taysha Blase, 29, was among them.

The Nebraska woman said she had subscribed to her ex-boyfriend’s OnlyFans account out of curiosity. What she found distressed her. Her ex, Vincent Tran, 31, sent out a notification in July 2021 offering his OnlyFans subscribers a 47-second sex video of a “PAWG,” or Phat Ass White Girl, for $15.

The video showed a distinctive tattoo. Ms. Blase said it was hers.

The next morning, Ms. Blase contacted the Omaha Police Department. She told Reuters she also submitted an online complaint to OnlyFans about Mr. Tran’s account but never received a response. According to OnlyFans, “no actionable information” was provided to the platform at that time.

About a month later, Ms. Blase said, she heard from the police that her case would be forwarded to the domestic violence unit. By that time, Mr. Tran had taken down the video, but Ms. Blase still wanted him charged, fearing the post could resurface, she said.

For months, Ms. Blase said, she felt distraught and uncomfortable in public, wondering who might have seen her on OnlyFans. “For all I know,” she said, “that person may now know what the most intimate parts of my body look like, and there’s nothing that I can do about it.”

On Dec. 12, 2023 — more than two years after Ms. Blase reported the incident to police, and nearly four months after Reuters first inquired about the case — an arrest warrant was issued for Mr. Tran. It alleged he recorded and distributed an intimate video of Blase without her consent — felonies in Nebraska.

Mr. Tran remains at large. Reuters reached him by telephone, however, and asked about the case.

“That’s something I don’t want to talk about,” he said.

‘WHEN I HAVE SEX… I ALWAYS FILM IT’
One alleged victim of nonconsensual porn is setting her sights on OnlyFans itself: Sammy, the college student.

Her lawsuit, filed in November 2022 in federal court in southern Florida, isn’t just about her alleged rape, but also about who profited from it.

It’s the first of its kind against OnlyFans and tests whether the website is liable under federal statutes designed to protect people from companies that “knowingly” benefit from sex trafficking — defined as commercial sex produced under “force, fraud, or coercion.”

“Those types of claims require that there be a financial benefit to the platform,” said Carrie Goldberg, a New York lawyer specializing in nonconsensual porn cases. “There’s really no easier platform to prove that for than OnlyFans,” she said, because the website takes a 20% cut of every transaction.

Sammy’s lawsuit cites violations of the same sex-trafficking laws used in a high-profile case against Pornhub. In 2021, its parent company, MindGeek, settled a sex-trafficking lawsuit brought by 50 women who accused the site of hosting nonconsensual porn and sought $100 million in damages.

The parent company — now called Aylo Holdings — said it has comprehensive safety measures to eradicate illegal material.

Sammy’s case, if successful, could bring similar attention to OnlyFans and its effectiveness in policing millions of creators, four legal experts told Reuters. It could also spur more lawsuits, they said.

OnlyFans did not comment on the experts’ assessments.

In a court filing, OnlyFans’ US subsidiary, Fenix Internet, said it will seek to have Sammy’s sex-trafficking case dismissed, citing free-speech protections that shield social media platforms and other websites from liability for content posted by users. If the two men did post the video, they would have violated OnlyFans’ terms of service, the company said.

Sammy’s lawsuit against OnlyFans is on hold pending the outcome of the criminal case against the men, Romelus and Charles.

Reuters couldn’t access the video of Sammy’s alleged rape posted on OnlyFans, which her attorney said lasted about 10 minutes. Instead, reporters viewed screenshots and listened to parts of the recording played by Miami-Dade detectives while questioning Romelus and Charles. They also pieced together Sammy’s story from other law enforcement records and interviews with her.

It was spring break in 2022, when Sammy, a music production student and aspiring singer, met Charles, 24, on a dating app. He invited her to a party at his apartment, she told police and Reuters.

She was excited when Charles picked her up that night with Romelus, 27, in the passenger seat. But when the three arrived at the apartment, no one else was there. After some drinks and dancing, the men grew sexually aggressive, she said.

Their behavior culminated in an attack in the bedroom, where Sammy said she was stripped, slapped, raped, and sodomized — all while a phone recorded her from atop a dresser.

“I was disoriented, shocked, scared,” she told Reuters. “I was just overwhelmed with how powerless I felt.”

She gathered her clothes and tried to take refuge in the living room, she said, but was again raped there. She said Romelus stood over her, holding his phone close to his head. At the time, Sammy thought he was on FaceTime, talking to someone, and shielded her face with her hands.

In fact, police said, Romelus was recording.

Afterward, the men took her to the workplace of her friend, Chris Philbert. As he drove her home, she broke down, punching the dashboard and swearing, Sammy and Philbert said in interviews. She opened the car door and tried to hurl herself onto the highway, because it felt “like the moment I’m supposed to die,” Sammy said. Her friend pulled her back in. “It was bad,” Philbert said. “It was just a terrible situation.”

Later, she checked herself into a hospital, where she called police.

Meanwhile, Philbert, after learning from Sammy that she might have been filmed, found Romelus’ OnlyFans page. Using OnlyFans’ messaging function, he said he was interested in buying a video of three people having sex, according to screenshots of his chats with Romelus provided to Reuters by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office.

On June 30, Romelus sold Philbert the video for $20, the screenshots showed. “More good videos coming my boy,” he told Philbert.

Philbert shared the video with investigators, and on July 26, 2022, Miami-Dade police arrested Romelus and Charles. They both denied they had raped Sammy. “Nobody forced her,” Romelus said in a video-recorded interview with two detectives, which Reuters reviewed.

The detectives played the OnlyFans video for Romelus on a phone. “In the video she says, ‘No, stop.’ Did you hear her?” Detective Nicole Wells said to Romelus. “She’s pushing you off.”

Romelus said he thought she was protesting because he was penetrating her too deeply. She knew she was being recorded and consented, he added. “When I have sex with somebody I always film it.”

When the detectives played the video for Charles, he said he couldn’t hear Sammy saying no and didn’t know the video had been posted on OnlyFans.

It’s unclear how long OnlyFans hosted the video or how many customers viewed it. Eleven days after it was posted, a lawyer for Sammy e-mailed police and said she was seeking to have it removed from the site “ASAP,” according to Miami-Dade Police Department records. The video has since been removed.

According to OnlyFans, it deactivated the account on July 29, 2022 — three days after Romelus’ arrest. OnlyFans didn’t comment further on the case.

The OnlyFans video remains key evidence against the defendants, who are out on bond and due to stand trial later this year. Charles declined to comment, as did the public defender’s office representing Romelus.

The detectives questioned Romelus for an hour on the day of his arrest, then left him alone in the interview room.

A camera in the room continued to record.

He sank his head into his hands and spoke quietly to himself. The man who had filmed Sammy seemed unaware he was now being filmed himself.

“I should have never posted that video,” Romelus said. “I’m so stupid.” — Reuters

ACEN obtains higher rating from CDP

ACEN Corp. has obtained a higher rating from nonprofit global entity CDP, which measures a company’s disclosure and environmental performance, the Ayala-led company said on Thursday.

“Our commitment to environmental transparency through CDP is a pivotal element of our sustainability strategy,” Jonathan Back, chief finance officer and chief strategy officer of ACEN Group, said in a statement.

“It not only reaffirms our accountability to stakeholders but also enhances our capability to manage environmental risks as we expand our renewable energy portfolio globally,” he added.

The company received a “B” score, which indicates that it has addressed the environmental impact of its businesses and that it has ensured good environmental management.

This rating is two levels up from its last year’s “C” score which indicates awareness-level engagement.

With the new rating, ACEN said that it “signifies the company’s strong environmental accountability to its stakeholders, helping it assess, identify, and manage environmental risks amid a growing renewables portfolio.”

The company attributed the improvement in its CDP score to its energy transition mechanism (ETM) made for the full divestment of the 246-megawatt South Luzon Thermal Energy Corp. coal plant.

Under the ETM framework, the coal plant will be retired by 2040, reducing its operating life of up to 50 years by half and reducing up to 50 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

“With over 23,000 businesses disclosing through CDP this year, it is clear that sustainability — and the data that underpins it — is not a ‘nice to have,’ but an essential part of long-term success in the business community that is showing no sign of slowing down — nor should it,” CDP Chief Executive Officer Sherry Madera said.

ACEN said that it has “actively participated” in the climate change questionnaire since starting its disclosures with CDP in 2022.

“The company’s ongoing efforts align with the increasing demand for environmental transparency from financial institutions, customers and policy makers,” the company said. — Sheldeen Joy Talavera

HR as a balancing act

Most of the time, we human resource (HR) managers are often asked the question — is HR for the workers or management? It’s not exactly a difficult question. My answer to that — HR should work in support of the organization’s best interests. Do you agree? — Blue Mountain.

I agree, 101%. However, many HR so-called professionals don’t share that opinion. They act like horses with partial blinders, favoring only management. That reason alone sends the wrong signal to the workers, which are HR’s customers as well. Even management would agree to that.

That’s why HR is required to pursue programs on engagement, empowerment, and others to reduce attrition rates and to motivate workers to do their best. A good example of the balancing act HR must pull off is as follows:

Bobby is a department manager who supervises the work of Ernie. Last week, Ernie went to Henry, the HR manager, to complain about his boss’ toxic style. What’s the best approach for HR? First, HR must clarify with Ernie on how he feels about the way Bobby operates.

The examples must be based on actual facts that can be verified independently.

Simple allegations will not cut it. However, Henry should be sincere in showing he’s interested in helping Ernie, whose job may be adversely affected if his negative views of Bobby become public. Let Ernie feel that his complaint is being treated seriously. However, if Henry finds Ernie’s complaint unmeritorious, he should explain it well without any hint of favoring Bobby.

Conversely, if there’s merit to Ernie’s complaint, Henry should coax him to discuss the issue with Bobby. This is much better than HR resolving the case between the two to avoid escalating the situation by causing Bobby to feel aggrieved about Ernie going behind his back.

If Henry is too timid to assert himself, then the best way is for HR to indirectly resolve the issue by coming up with a coaching program for all line supervisors and managers on avoiding conflict with their workers, without mentioning Bobby.

THE DAVE ULRICH FRAMEWORK
There’s no better way to perform HR’s job than to follow the four-fold framework of David Olson Ulrich, a global HR guru and university management professor. The framework prescribes that HR professionals should ensure that everyone works towards the best interests of the organization.

The HR manager can wear the hats of a strategic partner, an employee champion, an administrative expert and a change agent, not necessarily in that order.

One, HR as strategic partner. This means selecting the best workers and managing their career growth with an eye towards retaining them long term. It also means establishing policies and programs that are not limited to training, one-on-one coaching, and intra- or inter-department transfers, among other interventions.

Two, HR as employee champion. This involves teaching line leaders, supervisors, and managers how to proactively identify and learn the specific sentiments and concerns of their workers. This can be done by coaching all line leaders on how to conduct casual but effective engagement dialogues.

Three, HR as administrative expert. This requires focusing on process improvement in all HR tasks to ensure efficiency in meeting the specific needs of employees. A good example of this is the prompt issuance of an employment certificate and other documents, and limiting the number of signatories to the bare minimum in leave applications.

Four, HR as a change agent. HR should also serve as a catalyst for organizational change and transformation using the corporate mission, vision, and value statements as a compass. Programs to make this happen include the conduct of an annual employee morale survey, monthly town hall meetings, team problem-solving activities, etc.

NOT A RUBBER STAMP
An HR department head should be an objective professional who must serve the organization’s best interests, rather than meet the specific whims and caprices of department heads. For instance, when another department head asks HR to organize an exclusive training program on problem-solving for its employees, the best approach of HR is to ask the following questions tactfully:

What made you think it is important for your employees to be in that training program? How many employees in your department have a poor performance rating that could be attributed to their failure to solve problems? Have you explored other options to company-sponsored training? How about considering free courses offered by Coursera or other entities for training outside of office hours?

If the diplomatic approach does not succeed, the HR professional should be assertive enough to push back if a department head steps out of line. Indeed, HR must reconcile the interests of both labor and management and not act as anyone’s rubber stamp.

 

Bring Rey Elbo’s popular leadership program called “Superior Subordinate Supervision” to your management team. Contact him on Facebook, LinkedIn, X (Twitter) or e-mail elbonomics@gmail.com or via https://reyelbo.com

How PSEi member stocks performed — March 14, 2024

Here’s a quick glance at how PSEi stocks fared on Thursday, March 14, 2024.


Philippines moves up in Human Development Index

THE PHILIPPINES jumped five spots in the latest Human Development Index, but remained one of the laggards in Southeast Asia, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) said. Read the full story.

Philippines moves up in Human Development Index

SpaceX Starship lost on return to Earth after completing most of test flight

REUTERS

 – SpaceX’s Starship rocket, designed to eventually send astronauts to the moon and beyond, completed nearly an entire test flight on its third try on Thursday, making it much farther than before with a cruise through low orbit before being destroyed during a return to Earth, the company said.

During a live webcast of the flight, SpaceX commentators said mission control lost communications with the spacecraft during its atmospheric re-entry. The vehicle was nearing a planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean about an hour after launch.

A few minutes later, SpaceX confirmed that the spacecraft had been lost, presumably either burning up or coming apart during re-entry or crashing into the sea.

Still, completion of most of the intended hour-plus test flight trajectory of Starship marked a major milestone in the development of a spacecraft crucial to Elon Musk’s satellite launch business and NASA’s moon program.

NASA chief Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX on what he called “a successful test flight” in a statement posted on the social media platform X.

The two-stage spacecraft, consisting of the Starship cruise vessel mounted atop its towering Super Heavy rocket booster, blasted off from the Elon Musk-owned company’s Starbase launch site near Boca Chica Village on the south Texas Gulf Coast.

During its flight, Starship reached peak altitudes of 145 miles (234 km), the company said.

SpaceX engineers had hoped to improve on the Starship’s two past performances, which both ended in explosions minutes after launch. However, the company had acknowledged in advance a high probability that its latest flight might similarly end with the spacecraft’s destruction before the planned mission profile was finished.

SpaceX’s engineering culture, considered more risk-tolerant than many of the aerospace industry’s more established players, is built on a flight-testing strategy that pushes spacecraft to the point of failure, then fine-tunes improvements through frequent repetition.

Despite the outcome of Thursday’s test, all indications are that Starship remains a considerable distance from becoming fully operational.

Mr. Musk, SpaceX’s billionaire founder and CEO, has said the rocket should fly hundreds of uncrewed missions before carrying its first humans. Several other ambitious milestones overseen by NASA need to be met before the craft can execute a moon landing with American astronauts.

Still, Mr. Musk is counting on Starship to fulfill his goal of producing a large, multipurpose next-generation spacecraft capable of sending people and cargo to the moon later this decade, and ultimately flying to Mars.

Closer to home, Mr. Musk also sees Starship as eventually replacing the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as the workhorse in the company’s commercial launch business. It already lofts most of the world’s satellites and other payloads to low-Earth orbit. – Reuters

Self-proclaimed bitcoin inventor is not ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’, UK judge rules

KANCHANARA-UNSPLASH

 – An Australian computer scientist who claims he invented bitcoin is not “Satoshi Nakamoto”, the pseudonymous inventor of the cryptocurrency, a judge at London’s High Court ruled on Thursday.

Craig Wright has long claimed to have been the author of a 2008 white paper, the foundational text of bitcoin, published under the pseudonym.

The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) took Wright to court to stop him suing bitcoin developers, asking for a ruling that Wright was not Satoshi.

Judge James Mellor said on Thursday that Wright was not Satoshi and that he would give his full reasons for his decision at a later date.

COPA – whose members include Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s payments firm Block – previously said it had brought the lawsuit to preserve the open-source nature of bitcoin.

After Mellor announced his decision on Thursday, Dorsey posted a quote from the judge and a single letter: “W”.

COPA accused Wright of repeatedly forging documents to substantiate his claim, including during the trial itself, which Wright denied when he gave evidence.

Its lawyer, Jonathan Hough, said at the start of the trial in February that Wright’s claim was “a brazen lie, an elaborate false narrative supported by forgery on an industrial scale”.

Hough said that “there are elements of Dr Wright’s conduct that stray into farce”, citing his alleged use of ChatGPT to produce forgeries.

But he added: “Dr Wright’s conduct is also deadly serious. On the basis of his dishonest claim to be Satoshi, he has pursued claims he puts at hundreds of billions of dollars, including against numerous private individuals.”

Wright’s lawyers, however, argued in court filings that he had produced “clear evidence demonstrating his authorship of the white paper and creation of bitcoin”. – Reuters

US forecaster sees higher chance of La Nina conditions this summer

A US government weather forecaster projects El Nino conditions will likely end by spring this year but saw a 62% chance that a weather pattern characterized by unusually cold temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, La Nina, will develop during June-August.

There is an 83% chance that a transition from El Nino to ENSO-neutral is likely to occur by April-June 2024, followed by a shift to La Nina, National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC) said in a monthly forecast on Thursday.

“Even though forecasts made through the spring season tend to be less reliable, there is a historical tendency for La Nina to follow strong El Nino events,” the CPC said.

The ongoing El Nino weather pattern will continue to fuel above-average temperatures across the globe, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said last week.

El Nino peaked in December and would go down as one of the five strongest in history, it said.

Last year’s El Nino, which followed three La Nina years, saw hot and dry weather in Asia and heavier rains in parts of the Americas that boosted farm output prospects in Argentina and the southern US Plains.

India, the world’s biggest rice supplier, restricted exports of the staple following a poor monsoon, while wheat output in No.2 exporter Australia took a hit. Palm oil plantations and rice farms in Southeast Asia received less than normal rains.

The high probability of a strong La Nina arriving this year has put grains farmers on alert in Argentina, where the climate phenomenon usually brings dry weather with lower rainfall.

“With the El Nino phenomenon expected to end this year, 2025 might not have such a rosy beginning, while it will likely also increase the rains which feed the Panama canal and potentially ease congestion,” shipbroker Allied said in a note. – Reuters

Weak bids in Citgo auction spurs Venezuela to pitch alternative pay plan

Citgo Logo

 – The highest bid received in a US auction of shares that will decide the fate of Venezuela-owned oil refiner Citgo Petroleum was $7.3 billion, enough to cover only a third of court-approved claims, two people familiar with the matter said.

A federal court in Delaware is auctioning the shares of a parent of Venezuela’s foreign crown jewel, Houston-based Citgo, that it found liable for the South American country’s debt defaults and expropriations. Creditors have flocked to Delaware to press claims totaling $21.3 billion in a case first brought nearly seven years ago by miner Crystallex.

Results from the first bidding round in January, howevershow a sales process that is unlikely to provide a satisfactory outcome for creditors or Citgo’s current owners. Offers received thus far in a case that broke new legal ground in sovereign immunity would leave many claims unpaid, analysts and sources warned.

The court may have to revamp the sales process, or consider an alternative being drafted by Venezuela, which would offer creditors a larger payout with proceeds spread over several years, while retaining some of Venezuela’s stake in the company, the people said.

Judge Leonard Stark, who is overseeing the case, has declined to consider Venezuela’s payment proposals, the people said. It is unclear if he would reconsider with the highest offer in the initial bidding round covering only 14 of the 26 claims that he has accepted from 18 creditors.

The weak initial bids were below the $13 billion to $14 billion value specialists appointed by the court had estimated for the shares. That shortfall is prompting Citgo’s parent companies and boards to reprise an offer presented earlier this year: a $10 billion payment funded over time from Citgo profits, equity and borrowings.

 

EXTRA INNINGS

The auction has drawn interest from oil giant ConocoPhillips COP.N and units of conglomerate Koch Industries, both putting their claims against Venezuela via credit bids for the assets.

Other offers came from energy companies and private investors wanting to acquire the PDV Holding shares to gain control of the seventh-largest US oil refiner by volume, the people said.

Spokespeople for Conoco, Citgo and boards supervising the refiner declined to comment. Koch Industries and attorneys for the court official overseeing the auction did not reply to requests for comment.

PDV Holding’s only asset is Citgo, which owns three US refineries, oil storage terminals and pipelines, and controls a retail distribution network.

Citgo has been highly profitable, earning $4.8 billion in profits in the last two years.

The 12 non-binding offers received in January, however, reflect concerns over the future value of refiners with intense carbon footprints and Citgo’s troubled ties with Venezuela’s state oil firm PDVSA, which remains under socialist President Nicolas Maduro’s grip, the people said.

A lawyer representing Citgo had called the first bidding round “disappointing.”

The court is expected soon to set a second, binding round, but prospects of an offer higher than the non-binding $7.3 billion are slim, the people added.

Court officials involved in the case “will need to sit down with Venezuela and get together something that will make sense,” said a person close to the auction process.

Venezuela’s $10 billion proposal would provide creditors with a combination of cash, securities and shares in Citgo over a three-year period. It would ultimately allow Venezuela to retain about half ownership.

“We have only been doing damage control so far. We want to move the ball forward, the game has not finished,” one of the people familiar with Venezuela’s proposal said.

 

POLITICAL MISSILES

Venezuelan entities overseeing Citgo want to tie the payment plan to stronger US protection for the refiner from creditors as Maduro’s government refuses to reverse a ban on opposition candidate Maria Corina Machado from running for president, closing what Western countries saw as a path towards democracy in Venezuela.

The idea includes pulling the Venezuela-related claims out of the court case and into the US Foreign Claims Settlement Commission (FCSC), a quasi-judicial independent agency within the Justice Department, for better addressing all of Venezuela’s creditors.

Plan advocates are expected to discuss the proposal with US officials, possibly including Secretary of State Antony Blinken ahead of the April 18 expiry of a US license that relaxed sanctions on Venezuela’s energy sector.

Unifying Venezuela’s fractious opposition around a proposal, however, has been cumbersome and convincing Washington could be even more challenging, the sources acknowledged. Some politicians and members of Citgo’s supervising boards believe that having Ms. Machado in agreement would give the company a better chance of winning US support.

“Citgo will be even more valuable in the future,” Ms. Machado told reporters late Wednesday after a rally in central Carabobo state. “Hence, an organized restructuring process of all debts and accounts will benefit creditors more than the current auction.”

The plan also would require the US Treasury Department, which last year green-lit the auction, to agree to the offer, and the Delaware court could be forced to halt or freeze a sales process it fought hard to advance.

Spokespeople for Gerardo Blyde, who represents opposition parties negotiating with the Maduro administration, did not provide comment. The US State and Treasury departments did not immediately provide comment.

“We need a bullet-proof effort this time,” one of the people behind the ideas said referring to getting top opposition politicians well connected to Washington to lead the initiative. – Reuters

Ghostbots: AI versions of deceased loved ones could be a serious threat to mental health

STOCK IMAGE | Image by Vilius Kukanauskas from Pixabay

We all experience loss and grief. Imagine, though, that you don’t need to say goodbye to your loved ones. That you can recreate them virtually so you can have conversations and find out how they’re feeling.

For Kim Kardashian’s fortieth birthday, her then husband, Kanye West, gifted her with a hologram of her dead father, Robert Kardashian. Reportedly, Kim Kardashian reacted with disbelief and joy to the virtual appearance of her father at her birthday party. Being able to see a long-dead, much missed loved one, moving and talking again might offer comfort to those left behind.

STOCK IMAGE | Image by Vilius Kukanauskas from Pixabay

After all, resurrecting a deceased loved one might seem miraculous – and possibly more than a little creepy – but what’s the impact on our health? Are AI ghosts a help or hindrance to the grieving process?

As a psychotherapist researching how AI technology can be used to enhance therapeutic interventions, I’m intrigued by the advent of ghostbots. But I’m also more than a little concerned about the potential effects of this technology on the mental health of those using it, especially those who are grieving. Resurrecting dead people as avatars has the potential to cause more harm than good, perpetuating even more confusion, stress, depression, paranoia and, in some cases, psychosis.

Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) have led to the creation of ChatGPT and other chatbots that can allow users to have sophisticated human like conversations.

Using deep fake technology, AI software can create an interactive virtual representation of a deceased person by using their digital content such as photographs, emails, and videos.

Some of these creations were just themes in science fiction fantasy only a few years ago but now they are a scientific reality.

Digital ghosts could be a comfort to the bereaved by helping them to reconnect with lost loved ones. They could provide an opportunity for the user to say some things or ask questions they never got a chance to when the now deceased person was alive.

But the ghostbots’ uncanny resemblance to a lost loved one may not be as positive as it sounds. Research suggests that deathbots should be used only as a temporary aid to mourning to avoid potentially harmful emotional dependence on the technology.

AI ghosts could be harmful for people’s mental health by interfering with the grief process.

Grief takes time and there are many different stages that can take place over many years. When newly bereaved, those experiencing grief might think of their deceased loved one frequently. They might freshly recall old memories and it is quite common for a grieving person to dream more intensely about their lost loved one.

The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud was concerned with how human beings respond to the experience of loss. He pointed out potential added difficulties for those grieving if there’s negativity surrounding a death.

For example, if a person had ambivalent feelings towards someone and they died, the person could be left with a sense of guilt. Or if a person died in horrific circumstances such as a murder, a grieving person might find it more difficult to accept it this.

Freud referred to this as “melancholia”, but it can also be referred to as “complicated grief”. In some extreme cases, a person may experience apparitions and hallucinate that they see the dead person and begin to believe they are alive. AI ghostbots could further traumatize someone experiencing complicated grief and may exacerbate associated problems such as hallucinations.

There are also risks that these ghost-bots could say harmful things or give bad advice to someone in mourning. Similar generative software such as ChatGPT chatbots are already widely criticized for giving misinformation to users.

Imagine if the AI technology went rogue and started to make inappropriate remarks to the user – a situation experienced by journalist Kevin Roose in 2023 when a Bing chatbot tried to get him to leave his wife. It would be very hurtful if a deceased father was conjured up as an AI ghost by a son or daughter to hear comments that they weren’t loved or liked or weren’t their father’s favorite.

Or, in a more extreme scenario, if the ghostbot suggested the user join them in death or they should kill or harm someone. This may sound like a plot from a horror film but it’s not so far fetched. In 2023, the UK’s Labor party outlined a law to prevent the training of AI to incite violence.

This was a response to the attempted assassination of the Queen earlier in the year by a man who was encouraged by his chatbot girlfriend, with whom he had an “emotional and sexual” relationship.

The creators of ChatGPT currently acknowledge that the software makes errors and is still not fully reliable because it fabricates information. Who knows how a person’s texts, emails or videos will be interpreted and what content will be generated by this AI technology?

In any event, it appears that no matter how far this technology advances, there will be a need for considerable oversight and human supervision.

This latest tech says a lot about our digital culture of infinite possibilities with no limits.

Data can be stored on the cloud indefinitely and everything is retrievable and nothing truly deleted or destroyed. Forgetting is an important element of healthy grief but in order to forget, people will need to find new and meaningful ways of remembering the deceased person.

Anniversaries play a key role in helping those who are mourning to not only remember lost loved ones, but they are also opportunities to represent the loss in new ways. Rituals and symbols can mark the end of something that can allow humans to properly remember in order to properly forget. – Reuters

Raimondo assured PHL will address red tape, corruption

MARIANNE BERMUDEZ/PPA POOL PHOTO

PRESIDENT Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. promised a US delegation that the government will cut red tape and corruption to make investing in the Philippines more attractive, US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said on Thursday.

“President Marcos was clear with us and has been in his actions, that he is very forward-leaning towards the US,” she told a virtual briefing, after her two-day visit in Manila with a 22-member US Presidential Trade and Investment Mission this week.

“All these things (cutting red tape, anti-corruption measures) are steps in the right direction which will make the Philippines an even more attractive place to do business for American companies.”

The US mission indicated plans to invest over a billion dollars in the Philippines, Ms. Raimondo said on Monday.

Visa and United Parcel Service, Inc. committed to upskill Filipino workers from micro, small and medium enterprises and support their digitalization efforts, the US Department of Commerce said on Wednesday.

Microsoft Corp. also expressed its commitment to work with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, and the Departments of Budget and Management and Trade and Industry (DTI) to train jobseekers and students in artificial intelligence.

Google will also roll out a career certificate program in 50 virtual campuses at the DTI 1,300 local business centers in 16 regions.

More than 30 million workers are expected to benefit from the digital upskilling investment pledges, Ms. Raimondo said at the briefing.

Private equity firm KKR & Co. has also pledged to continue investing about $400 million to develop about 2,000 telecommunications towers in the Philippines.

Calixto V. Chikiamco, Foundation for Economic Freedom president, said in a Viber message that Mr. Marcos should appoint an official that will act as a “ringleader or bastonero” to impose discipline on local governments and government agencies that impose unwarranted bureaucratic delays on investors.

“Government should institute express lanes for big-ticket investment projects, which further reduces the number of days in the processing of permits and licenses at all levels of government,” Terry L. Ridon, a public investment analyst and convenor of think tank InfraWatch PH said in a Facebook Messenger chat.

The President should also implement a whistleblower program to bring to the surface corruption in major projects.

US companies are keen on investing in the Philippines’ semiconductor industry and to double the number of packaging, testing and assembly facilities, Ms. Raimondo told a business forum in Makati on Tuesday. The Philippines has 13 of these facilities in total.

The Philippines is one of seven countries that the US is working with to diversify its semiconductor supply chain, as required by the CHIPS and Science Act.

Under the law, the US will provide $52.7 billion in subsidies to boost chip manufacturing and to persuade chipmakers in China to move to the US or other friendly countries.

Last month after his visit to Manila, US State Department Undersecretary for Economic Growth, Energy, Environment Jose W. Fernandez said high energy costs are keeping semiconductor companies and miners from investing in the Philippines.

“These are some of America’s biggest and most successful companies and they are deeply committed to making these investments,” Ms. Raimondo said on Thursday.

“He (Mr. Marcos) is very committed to making the necessary changes in the regulatory structure, cutting tape, being against corruption, being a transparent government.” — John Victor D. Ordoñez