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With disinformation on the rising , specially given the blowup of AI , companies are just as vulnerable to its impression as individuals . Refute is a London - based startup that detects and answer to disinformation on behalf of commercial entities . It ’s now raised a £ 2.3 million ( $ 2.9 million ) pre - seed round conduce by U.K. investorsPlayfairandEpisode 1 .
There are plenty of factors fueling disinformation attacks , such as geopolitical unbalance and the consumption of productive AI to create misleading content .
Tom Garnett , cobalt - founder and chief executive officer at Refute , told TechCrunch : “ We find that survive customer are often using societal and culture medium monitoring tools to try and interpret the disinformation threat . But these are inactive dick generally plan for marketing determination [ … ] In our experience , such signals are misleading , as noise level are high and the story birthplace is obscured . The result is that users are n’t equip to sympathize — and therefore come up to — the full picture of the menace . ”
Clearly , this is a grow space , as several startups have emerged to go after this grocery store . Competitors to Refute include Alethea ( raised $ 30 million ) , Blackbird AI ( $ 30.6 million ) , and Logically AI ( $ 36.7 million ) .
“ We ply both the detection and reply part of the result . This set us apart in the market , as other advance are primarily focused on signal detection , ” Garnett say .
Refute get hold disinformation campaign by detecting the “ threat actor ” behaviors of an adversary .
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Garnett started his career in national security at Detica and BAE Systems , where he built large - scale , data - analytic thinking solutions to investigate criminal action with a focus on terrorist attack .
He realized that similar underlie technology could be used to fight criminal activity in the commercial-grade sector , include cyberattacks and financial crime . “ This led me to lead up the government and cybersecurity byplay at Ripjar : selling , construction , and deliver solutions for technical school companies , fiscal service , oil and gas and governing customers . ”
His co - founder , Vlad Galu , grew up in Romania in the eighties and 1990s , where he experienced the scourge of disinformation firsthand . He told TechCrunch : “ I commence building heart and soul internet infrastructure and serve in Romania and Central - Eastern Europe [ … ] Building everything from wampum during a prison term of emerging technology and limited sound frameworks have in mind we had to carry out layered defense strategies against threat targeting both platforms and end users . ”
Notion Capital and Amadeus Capital Partners also participated in the fundraising round . Refute also received angel investment from investors Charlie Songhurst , Carlos Espinal , James Chappell , and Alastair Paterson .
Andrew Sheffield , head teacher at Playfair Capital , said in a instruction : “ The information landscape is change : it is harder than ever to tell fact from fabrication , and the price of open misleading message continues to precipitate [ … ] Tom and Vlad possess 40 - plus years of experience in data point analysis , cybersecurity , tackle terrorist attacks , identity management , and money laundering . ”
