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I can perfectly imagine the pain, confusion, and betrayal in the voice of the elderly Malaysian woman who, according to a hotel staff member, asked “Why do they do this to people?” when she found out that her dream holiday destination wasnt real but a video fabricated with Veo3, the generative artificial engine made by Google. She and her husband had just driven three hours from Kuala Lumpur to this location in Perak state, convinced they would find a scenic cable car attraction called the Kuak Skyride. Instead of a gondola to wander across paradise, they found nothing but a quiet town and a hotel worker trying to explain that the glamorous TV journalist they’d watched on TikTokthe one who had ridden the tram through lush forests and interviewed happy touristshad never existed at all. There was a Veo3 logo in the bottom right corner. How on Earth didnt they see that? Oh well, its something to tell the grandkids and feel really dumb. No criminals lifting $200,000 from their savings account, no false accusations to sink grandpas reputation, like others have experienced thanks to AI-made videos. No real harm done. Except it is harmful. Its another brick out of the walls of our reality in a world thats been crumbling in this post-truth era. AI has made the impossible indistinguishable from the actual, and now its turning even vacation planning into a minefield of false experiences. The alleged Malaysian couple’s story might sound like an isolated incident, but its the expression of something far more sinisterthe complete erosion of our ability to trust what we see, hear, and experience in a world where artificial intelligence can manufacture any narrative with increasingly terrifying precision. The AI black hole is growing exponentially The numbers tell the story of our collective descent into digital deception. Deepfake attacks have exploded from just 0.1% of all fraud attempts three years ago to 6.5% todaya staggering 2,137% increase that represents one in every 15 fraud cases, as identity services company Signicat detailed in February 2025. The statistics have real victims behind them, like Steve Beauchamp, an 82-year-old retiree who drained his entire $690,000 retirement fund after watching deepfake videos of Elon Musk promoting investment schemes. “I mean, the picture of himit was him,” Beauchamp told The New York Times, his life savings vanished into the digital void. The scope of AI-powered deception now touches every aspect of human experience. The British engineering company Arup lost more than $25 million when an employee was tricked during a video conference call featuring deepfake versions of the company’s CFO and other staff members. A school principal in Maryland received death threats after an AI-manipulated audio clip showed him making racist and antisemitic remarksa fabrication created by his own athletics director to discredit him. Even democracy itself isn’t safe: AI-generated robocalls impersonating President Joe Biden encouraged Democrats not to vote in the New Hampshire primary. The list goes on and on. And now this couple. AI tourism The deception began with a video published on TikTok by “TV Rakyat,” a television channel that sounds official but exists only in the realm of artificial intelligence. The footage showed a reporter experiencing the Kuak Skyride, a cable car attraction supposedly located in the town of Kuak Hulu in Perak state. She rode the tram through beautiful forests and mountains, interviewing satisfied customers about their journeys. Everything looked perfect, professional, and real. On June 30, the couple checked into their hotel in Perak state and approached someone on the staffwho goes by @dyaaaaaaa._ on Threadsto ask about the scenic cable car they’d seen online. The worker claims that she initially thought they were joking because there was no cable car, no attraction, nothing to see around. But the couple insisted, showing the detailed video they’d watched featuring the TV host and her interviews with happy tourists. When the staff member explained that what they’d seen was an AI-generated video, the couple refused to believe it. They had driven three hours based on footage that felt completely authentic, complete with a professional news presentation and satisfied customer testimonials. According to the hotel employee, the elderly woman threatened to sue the journalist in the video before learning that she, too, was nothing more than a pixel figment of an AIs imagination. Things were bad enough already Tourism was already drowning in manufactured reality before AI perfected the art of deception. Social media has transformed travel into selfie tourism, where visitors flock to destinations not for cultural immersion but to capture Instagram-worthy shots for their feeds. UNESCO has declared a three-alarm fire on this phenomenon, warning that travelers now visit iconic landmarks primarily to take and share photos of themselves, often with iconic landmarks in the background. The consequences are devastating. In Hallstatt, Austriaa town that inspired Disney’s Frozenover a million tourists descend annually to re-create viral moments, forcing the frustrated mayor to erect fences and tell the press that the town’s residents just want to be left alone Venice gondolas capsize when tourists refuse to stop photographing. Portofino, Italy, now fines visitors $300 for lingering too long at popular selfie spots to prevent what Mayor Matteo Viacava calls anarhic chaos. That was all the product of influencers already distorting reality with carefully cropped shots of empty beaches and architectural marvels, editing out the crushing crowds and environmental destruction that mass tourism brings. These curated fantasies created unrealistic expectations about travel destinations, leading to overcrowding, infrastructure strain, and the degradation of local communities. And dont get me started on AI-generated travel influencers. Yes, fake humans peddling AI-generated travel advice on video is now a thing that has turned into an industry (and while many people hate them, many others totally buy the scam). Even governments like Germany have sanctioned them: The German National Tourist Board launched an online marketing campaign in 2024 that featured artificial personalities to promote travel to the country. Its a depressing prospect. The Malaysian couple’s experience is just the newest chapter in our journey from reality to manipulated reality to completely fabricated reality. I tell myself that we can only face it with pervasive education campaigns, but Im afraid that it will always be too little too late.
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E-Commerce
“I can’t believe it only took a week.” That’s what a nonprofit leader will say in 2030 after launching an AI-powered platform that reaches millions of people. Not through a huge team or a multi-million dollar grant, but with a handful of staff and volunteers, and the right AI strategy. This isn’t the melody of the future; it’s already happening. Organizations that start preparing now will hold a massive advantage, because tomorrow’s AI-native nonprofits won’t just operate faster. They’ll solve problems at a scale we’ve never seen before. The gap between AI-curious and AI-transformed Walk into most nonprofit Zoom calls today and you’ll find teams experimenting with ChatGPT for grant writing, and maybe a Zapier automation connecting their CRM to their email platform. A recent survey showed that nonprofits may be incorporating AI more quickly than private companies, as 58% of nonprofits are using it for communications (versus 47% for B2C companies). Also, 68% of nonprofits are leveraging AI for data analysis, higher than the 64% of B2C brands doing so. But there’s a canyon-sized gap between using AI tools and actually transforming how an organization works. Real transformation looks different. Take Operation Fistula, which uses predictive analytics to identify women most at risk of obstetric fistula in underserved regions. Its AI model helped target interventions five times more efficiently than traditional outreach methods. Or consider Amnesty International’s use of machine learning for satellite image analysis in Darfurtasks that previously took weeks now take hours. Yet for every success story, there are challenges that organizations must navigate carefully. Privacy concerns around beneficiary data, the digital divide that can exclude vulnerable populations, and the risk of algorithmic bias require responsible and ethical implementation strategies. 3 capabilities will define the future nonprofit workforce Imagine its 2030, and youre stepping into a social impact organization that has fully embraced AI. Not just as a set of tools, but as a new way of working, and built from the ground up with AI at its core. The most effective nonprofit teams wont be split into tech versus nontech silos. Instead, they’ll be organized around fluid, AI-enabled capabilities: Nontech specialists use general-purpose AI tools to enhance their core work-program officers who leverage AI for research synthesis, fundraisers who use it for donor analysis, and communications teams that employ it for multilingual content creation. Soft-tech builders understand workflows deeply enough to create lightweight automations within their domains. Think of a disaster response coordinator who builds an AI agent to monitor social media for crisis signals, or a volunteer coordinator who creates automated matching systems for skills-based volunteering. Tech orchestrators maintain the AI infrastructure, curate tool stacks, and develop the custom solutions that connect digital capabilities to real-world impact. These aren’t job titlesthey’re capabilities that successful organizations distribute across teams, empowering programs, fundraising, and operations alike. 5 archetypes emerging in the nonprofit landscape Looking across the sector and at more than 2,000 nonprofits registered at Tech To The Rescue (which includes over 100 AI projects), organizations are clustering into five distinct approaches to AI adoption: Pioneers are building AI-native impact organizations from the ground up. Tarjimly exemplifies this approach. Their machine learning platform scaled refugee translation services from hundreds to tens of thousands of conversations per month, serving 10 times more people with the same operational resources. Scalers are established organizations undergoing coordinated AI transformation, with dedicated roles for AI integration and systematic process redesign. Explorers are experimenting with custom toolsAI-powered demand forecasting, automated volunteer scheduling, predictive analytics for program targetingbut without strategic integration across departments. Starters represent the majority of the sector: organizations just beginning to use general-purpose AI tools but lacking internal structure or capacity for deeper transformation. Community-based organizations remain focused on direct human relationships, slower to adopt AI, but still benefitting through partnerships with tech-enabled organizations. Each archetype faces the same fundamental question: What processes to automate, and where to stay deeply human? The road to AI-native nonprofits The first wave of transformation is herenonprofits that recognized early how AI could fundamentally change their ability to serve vulnerable populations and unlock institutional knowledge at scale. Jacaranda Health demonstrates this approach: their AI-powered PROMPTS platform handles over 7,000 daily SMS messages from mothers across Sub-Saharan Africa, providing personalized maternal health guidance at just $0.74 per mother while identifying high-risk situations and triaging them to human agents within minutes. Ashoka transformed decades of institutional knowledge through AI. With nearly 20,000 pages of data from 4,000 social entrepreneur selection processes, they developed an AI tool that enables any staff member in 30 countries to explore their vast repository of social innovation insights through simple searches, rather than complex syntactic queries. Imagine the potential of organizations designed from the ground up for an AI realitywhere personalization, prediction, and automation aren’t added later, but form the DNA of every solution from day one. The implementation reality This transformation does not happen without aligned incentives and a serious acknowledgment of challenges and risks. Smart funders are shifting their approach, recognizing that organizations equipped to leverage AI effectively will create exponential impact per dollar invested. This means funding not just outcomes, but organizational capacity to transform: process standardization, team upskilling, and experimentation cyclesto ensure cross-disciplinary teams navigate the evolving AI governance landscape, manage cybersecurity risks, and ensure algorithmic fairness while maintaining community trust and data protection standards. For nonprofit leaders, the message is clear: Waiting for &8220;safe” templates is a luxury you can’t afford. Early movers aren’t just gaining operational advantagesthey’re setting the standards for what ambitious, AI-enabled impact looks like in their sectors. The future isn’t about AI replacing nonprofits; it’s about nonprofits reinventing themselves to operate at the scale our most pressing problems require. Climate change, inequality, and global health challenges need solutions that can reach millions, not thousands. The organizations that start building AI-native capabilities now will be the ones solving problems we can barely imagine today. If youre a funder or high-net-worth individual looking for leveragethis is it. AI-native nonprofits dont just need money; they need smart capital that accelerates experimentation, funds infrastructure, and backs the teams already proving whats possible. The next big leap in social impact will most probably come from funding the impact builders. Jacek Siadkowski is cofounder and CEO of Tech To The Rescue
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E-Commerce
Five years ago, we werent so divided as a business community on supporting a broad range of initiatives. However, since January, many U.S. companies have rolled back their DEI programs, including Chipotle, Comcast, Disney, GE, GM, Google, Intel, and Pepsi. Other companies, such as Nike and JPMorganChase are delaying the publication of their impact reports. Even an industry tentpole event, like the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, this year was largely mum on DEI, when just three years ago it was the topic du jour. Reasonings ranged from legal challenges and internal pushback to economic factors and political scrutiny from the Trump administration. In the past, there was an unspoken policy that most businesses dont get politicala sentiment I dont disagree with. But the hard truth is the modern workforce is aware of whats going on in the world, and they see acquiescence or silence as being complicit. Some consumers have expressed their dissatisfaction through boycotts that have impacted major retailers such as Target, which saw a drop in sales and stock prices following its DEI rollback. Beyond the economic repercussions, companies need to realize that these sudden about-faces lead to uncertainty for their stakeholders. Instead of changing their values during times of chaos, companies need to stand true to their clarity of mission, culture, and communication. Clarity of missionstay true to your North Star At a time when organizations are being attacked from any side, companies must define what they stand for. Every ship must have a rudder and a course for a successful voyage. Thats even more important in a stormand make no mistake, we are in a storm. Its easy to get lost in balance sheets from quarter to quarterparticularly when budgets get tight. But organizations need to zoom out in terms of their business timeline. Administrations are temporary, but the goal is to court customers for life. Take Apple for example. The company has maintained its commitment that business should be a force for good by focusing on innovation, collaboration, and serving others. We believe that business, at its best, serves the public good, empowers people around the world, and binds us together as never before, said Apple CEO Tim Cook. Rather than shying away from various initiatives, Apple uses a portion of its investor relations page to highlight its work on education, accessibility, DEI, and the environment. And Apples investors agree with the companys course. Despite pressure from a conservative think tank, Apple shareholders in February rejected a proposal to eliminate the companys DEI program. It can be prudent to update methods or change tact, but companies should not change their destination or values. Cook conceded that as the legal landscape evolves, Apple may need to change some policies to comply, but the companys North Star of dignity and respect for everyone would remain. Every companys North Star is a little different, but consumers are watching for it. Clarity of cultureempower your employees and consumers The clearest way to keep your company aligned on values is maintaining its distinct culture; an organizations culture is one of the key experiential outcomes of its stated mission. While some companies are pulling back their DEI activities for fear of government or political retaliation, I would argue that customer and stakeholder sentiment is more impactful in the long run. For certain companies, like Ben & Jerrys, their customers are clear in supporting DEI initiatives. Other companies, like AB inBev pulled back its activities after the backlash and boycott following Bud Lights marketing partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. More recently, we see companies such as Delta Airlines maintaining their DEI policies, not just because of customers, but because of their talent and business pipeline. The company has always maintained that its inclusive policies have led to business growth, talent retention, and customer loyalty. Deltas website includes updated employment demographics and showcases the work it does to nurture aviators from underrepresented groups. In response to political backlash, Delta doubled down earlier this year, maintaining its steadfast support of its DEI efforts. The company highlights the importance of a company reflecting the backgrounds of the people it servesbecause businesses dont just operate in America or in red states or blue states. And business results underscore that distinction. Companies with higher DEI rates are more likely to outperform their competitors in profitability. Clarity of communicationtalk the talk while walking the walk Through all this turbulence and uncertainty, its integral to business success for companies collaborate with their staff and communicate with their customers. Organizations must ensure that what theyre doing is aligned not just with their corporate values, but community values too. Any misalignment must be addressed. And dont be subtle about it. Pick a lane and definitely communicate what youre doing. A clear, bold message leaves no room for misinterpretation and projects a necessary confidence in your business values and goals. Despite not having a corporate public relations team, Costco has been the most vocal example of clear stakeholder communication about its values. Costco maintained the price on its iconic $1.50 hot dog despite inflation causing prices to rise. The move firmly protected the wholesale retailers consumer culture and made customers feel like the company had their back. In January, Costco went viral on social media as the counterpoint to Target when it maintained its DEI policies. And once again, the results prove clearly communicating company values to customers translates to business wins. In addition to maintaining the support of shareholders who dont want the company to bend to activist investors, Costcos sales have continued to climb through the first half of 2025. Justin Tobin is founder and president of Gather.
Category:
E-Commerce
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