Protecting Your Business from AI Scams

Welcome to Make Good Things Happen, a podcast for makers in business presented to you by Angela
D’Alton and Reneé Baker.
Welcome to Make Good Things Happen, season three, episode six. My name is Angela D’a’Alton and of
course, joining me as always is Reneé Baker. How are you? I’m good. How are you? I’m good.
a couple of weeks to go until ballarat craft and design week and it’s looking really exciting this
episode we also wanted to talk about from scroll to cart one of the things that Renee and I
stumbled upon in our social media scrolls was a story from a business called Milk Wick,
owned by Gabby Foord. This story ended up being covered by A Current Affair on Channel 9.
And it’s something that we’re all going to have to be increasingly careful about as artificial
intelligence gets smarter and smarter, I guess. There was a scam. ultimately where a customer had
made a purchase with this lady who owns a candle business and received a email with an image
attached outlining the shattered state of the candles so there were candles in glass sort of
beakers or glasses of some description and the image looked like the two candles that were in there
had been smashed in transit and uh turns out though on closer inspection of the image the owner of
the business cleverly identified that it was ai slop based on a number of factors and it was the
first that i’d heard of this but what i had also ascertained reading through this was that this has
become somewhat of a common scam Well, I’ve only seen it mentioned online as well,
just through online community Facebook groups. I mean, so many, I won’t begin to list them,
but I have seen it mentioned on there before for people to just, you know, look out for this kind
of activity. Yeah, I think it’s funny you say like the AI is getting smarter, but it’s actually the
humans kind of cunning use of the technology and how they’re thinking, oh, that might be a good way
that I can get away with this. I don’t really understand why or what the motivation. would be for
someone to try and scam a candle business out of what? Especially a small business.
Yeah, exactly. The thing that I guess is really interesting is how quickly you can sort of start to
pull these apart. And it kind of reminds me of those when I was a kid, they used to be in the
newspaper. I’m sure it’s still a thing now, but the spot the difference games where you have two
images and you’d have to circle everything that was different. And I think in this candle example,
it did make me laugh how there was spilt wax all over the table, but then there was no wicks in the
candle. Also, if they shattered on transit, why would there be wax spilt? Because they wouldn’t
have melted. Just why would there be wax spilt? I guess when I’m talking about the AI improving,
I’m meaning the quality of the imagery that it produces as well. In that when humans are using the
AI to scam small businesses or business owners in general, that it may become increasingly
difficult for the business owner, I guess, to have the prompt that makes them look closer.
in that visual sense um because yeah sometimes you it is really hard to tell getting better so
quickly like so rapidly and that’s this is only going to be one of those areas where it improves
six months from now 12 months from now it’ll be significantly better so we wanted to chat about it
because it is you know in our wheelhouse of talking about scams but also that It is something to be
wary of and to start sort of to take notice of. And I thought it might be helpful just to share a
couple of tips as to how you can be aware of these things. Well, the first thing to do is if you
notice anything like this. So if something happens to your businesses, you can actually report this
behaviour at ScamWatch, which is part of the ACCC. So it’s a government website,
scamwatch.gov.au. That way you can start to make sure that these things are being reported and so
that the ACCC can be aware of trends. And this is going to be one of those trends that they’ll sort
of now start to educate people on. But also, as always, it’s not the first time we’ve said this,
but it’s always worth… these opportunities to just check in with your own returns policy and what
you have stated on your website for how you would manage something like this. Are you comfortable
accepting returns based purely off a photograph or do you require the product to be posted back for
you to inspect it? Again, there’s sort of no real right and wrong with these things, but you do
have to weigh up the risk if you do sell things that are worth hundreds of dollars and people…
are able to get around that, you might want to make sure that they actually post the item back
before you offer any kind of cash refund. It’s the cunning that will identify some kind of
vulnerability or loophole in a system or in human behavior. And then that’s kind of what it comes
down to is taking advantage of that. This is taking advantage of your good intentions,
but also as small businesses, we’re low hanging fruit to scammers.
We’re like a pilot, you know, like a test model. I wonder if people in business would fall for
this. When there are things that feel funny, you will often just get a vibe. It’s uncanny how many
people have said this to me who own businesses. The first thing that feels off is just the vibe.
There is something about the transaction, the person, the customer, whatever it might be. Trust
that. It is important to maintain a critical eye over things, to analyse things objectively where
you can when you are a business owner. It is really hard for all of us. We care about our business.
We care about what we make. We understand how personal. all of this is to you and when someone does
this it would be quite a difficult thing to deal with it’s easier to talk about these things than
it is to experience it is important that you do reach out to the variety of resources that you have
available to you be that business advisor a lawyer an accountant whoever you think in your
professional networking circle who is going to be able to support you through something like this
those little things they’re just like they bum you out so bad i know it is a sinking feeling and if
you sort of like feel like you wouldn’t know what to look out for if you’re trying to pick an
artificial intelligence image that’s been manipulated i mean the first thing i would suggest you do
is ask for more images and even video can sometimes be really helpful because it’s a lot harder for
the technology to get that accuracy especially to repeat it as well i think it’s hard for them to
sort of do multiples of the one thing so that could be a good place to start and also you can even
run it through ai detection software as well like i said feeling like it’s okay to advocate for
yourself and for your business of course like we always know that you will approach it with the
kind customer service We do know that you will approach these things with temper in a way that…
my advice always when you don’t know what to do just wait talk to as many people as you can first
before you do anything it’s also okay to take a day to process some of that stuff it does feel very
urgent and it does feel like you have to resolve it very quickly because of how ugly it feels but
it is important that you remain steady and calm if you can rely on the people around you because
then you’ll make better decisions in relation to business which makes it more sensible in the long
run, in my opinion anyway.
And on the note of scams, one of the things that Renee and I have noticed recently with some events
that have popped up in the last few years for this very special version of this segment,
Events Breakdown, we wanted to talk to you a little bit about what to look for in an event when you
are applying as a storeholder. We saw a story in the news this last week about a market and venue
and police and a whole array of issues that were occurring with a market event.
We get asked about this a lot is what should I look for in an event as a stall holder and also
further to that how to avoid getting involved in an event that may end in tears for everybody
concerned and I’ve done them so I can say that.
And, yeah, there’s some things. I’ve done a lot of events, big and small, as a stallholder,
but also I’ve managed a lot of events as a… manager slash curator etc as has renee renee equally
has a whole ton of events based experience both as a stall holder and as part of the management of
the event so yes we do know what we’re talking about in this regard this is the opposite to the
financial caveat this is me saying no caveats here so we do want to discuss what to look for in an
event as a storeholder speaking from our vast amount of experience what we have noticed in the
events industry post-covid is an increase in new small businesses in particular or new ventures
undertaking brand new events in a variety of areas. It might be vintage and pre-loved.
It might be a music festival. It might also be a maker’s market of some description. There’s been a
few of them that have popped up around the place since COVID and since the understandable trend of
people returning to real life events and wanting to get back out there. And we have anecdotally and
obviously through the news, as I mentioned at the top of the segment, seen a few dodgy proprietors
who think that it looks easy. to run an event. It looks like a license to print money and that’s
kind of where they head in that direction, hoping to have a big payday and forgetting about the
unbelievable list of things that you have to do to comply legally. I was going to say speaking of
money because if I had a dollar for the amount of times people had told us that we should just
start running. a market given all of that experience that you mentioned we would love to but we
also know that it isn’t something that is just like you say a license to print money it is a lot of
work and a lot goes in it and i know sometimes for storeholders who are particularly starting out
or maybe haven’t maybe have been in the game for 10 years and they can feel a bit disheartened by
the cost of getting involved in a market, particularly some of the big multi-day events who have
really solid reputations, I can actually assure you that there’s a reason that those costs are in
place because running events of that scale is not cheap, nor is it easy and it requires expertise.
It is an interesting equation and I think that there is an understanding of paying for the stall
and expecting to get that plus more back from the experience every time increasingly though that’s
becoming harder and harder for events because the costs of having the same event now as as it would
have been to have 10 years ago are substantially different but there’s only so many people that
those venues can contain in a comfortable way to have a shopping experience so there is a
limitation on the ceiling i guess of ultimately how much money can go through that venue or those
places over that amount of time that they’re open etc etc insurance alone has skyrocketed from pre
-covered times before covert there was also a lot of bushfires we’ve seen major events occurring to
have that flow on effect to general business costs but specifically to event costs because they are
already high risk they’re inherently high risk because there’s so many moving parts it’s like a
burst of activity vehicles and building things and it’s just a general chaotic environment for a
few days at least those things will make sense it’s a very hard thing though for people who are
involving themselves in these events who are still in the earlier stages of their business in many
cases it is a high cost. I actually will throw a caveat in to say we are certainly not suggesting
that if you want to give it a go and you don’t have experience in running markets that you
shouldn’t do it. We absolutely think that you should back yourself do it. That’s not what we’re
talking about in this case though but this is where we’re just maybe shining a bit of a spotlight
on those that are perhaps a little more opportunistic and aren’t operating with the storeholders in
mind and that’s I suppose what we have seen particularly in the last years like you’ve said through
some of our own community who have suffered as a result if i can offer my first tip or the one
thing that i sort of do and i think you touched on it where you get that kind of funny feeling when
you were talking about the ai images Same goes for looking at the website. Not necessarily saying
you need to look out for a $25,000 website that has all the bells and whistles, but maybe things
just feel a little off with the website, but especially with… seems to be a theme,
the terms and conditions that are published. I know, again, from experience, one of the things that
is always worth doing is pulling up the terms and conditions of some of the bigger markets and just
cross-referencing and seeing if you’re noticing similarities. We have seen the old copy-paste and
so I guess what we’re trying to say is if someone’s copy-pasted terms and conditions from someone
else’s website, it’s not a good sign to start. I think it’s… just worth doing some due diligence
around the business operations if they have an ABN against ABN lookup,
having a look to see if there is official registration of that. business name, there’s a few little
things that you can do to snoop around to make sure that that business is at least legitimate from
that standpoint, which gives you immediately some reassurance that there is a system,
a governance in place. Always make sure that the brand is a match for you,
no matter what event it is that you’re participating in. Some events set up sounds amazing and then
you may get sent the flyer or the logo. and that will immediately undermine any ounce of potential
that you felt that you had with this particular event. Keep those things in mind. Make sure there’s
assets available for you to be able to make some brand assessments from. Yes,
their website, but also social media presence. Does the way they manage their social media fit with
yours? Is there a target market comparison to yours? Ask around.
A lot of the markets that have been around have reputations, of course,
within the community. Ask other storeholders. Ask friends that have either been to the market as a
shopper or participated as a storeholder to see what they think, how they feel about the
organisers. Are the organisers the kind of people that take care of the storeholders? Do they bring
a great crowd? What sort of advertising do they do? Is it suitable for you?
That’s the most important thing to consider. But avoiding dodgy, that can be a reputational thing
too. It’s often the people who do the first one. That’s where the risk lies. usually in that first
one because that’s often where if it is a scammer they will only do it once and they’ll get a whole
bunch of money and that’ll be it because they’ve ruined their reputation yeah yeah which is why
you’ve mentioned organizers but that’s another one to check make sure that there’s an about page or
at the very least a mention of who is organizing the event and how it’s being funded and structured
and so again you can always use things like linkedin to check the credibility of event organizers
or to sort of see a bit of information about their background or you can always just ask these
questions directly sometimes we can do all the snooping around that we want to and we can’t find it
but we still actually have a good feeling about the event you can actually just ask questions that
you need the answers to and the way that those questions are responded to is often a good measure
as well. So not just the answers, but how your questioning is being reacted to. Yeah,
100%. That’s a really good point. We can often get a vibe from people when we ask for information
or we ask for our needs to be addressed. A whole lot of other material about markets on our
website. Some of it will be available on the public blog. If you’re a member, there’ll be
additional content in the members only area. It’s something that we like to talk about.
We’ve both got lots of experience. We’ve done dodgy events. I did an event once where the organiser
didn’t even turn up. All the stallholders were there going, where’s the guy?
We just set up on our own. We didn’t know where we were supposed to be, nothing. Speaking of events
and markets, this last weekend we would like to congratulate our friends at the Makers and Shakers
Market. They would have had their first event for the year, their 10th year in business as Makers
and Shakers Markets in Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building. So congratulations to Emily and the
whole team and the stallholders that are involved. I hope you had a good weekend. The Finders
Keepers is going to be back in Sydney. Carriageworks, which is down in Eberle for a market on the
1st to the 3rd of May. And so there’s going to be 150 stalls there and filled with lots of
delightful makers and storeholders and plenty of good food as well. one to pop in the calendar if
you’re Sydney-based. Moving to Adelaide, Bowerbird is back on the 15th to the 17th of May.
They’re actually moving into a refreshed new format, which directly from their communications is
aimed to strengthen the customer experience and deliver opportunities for designers.
So they’re moving into the Ridley Centre, which is, I think, a more modern column free space that’s
highlighted which I know can be a little bit of a sore point for us when we’re building stalls and
navigating fixtures within buildings so that’s exciting if you’re thinking of checking out that
market it’d be worth popping along to the new venue just to see what it’s like. Big design market
have their almost winter. event at the end of May 22nd to the 24th of May,
also at the Royal Exhibition Building. That is going to be a big one that will be packed full of
shopping goodness as always. Last but not least in our events breakdown,
I did want to mention that I am hosting another Crafting Conversation event as part of Ballarat
Craft and Design Week. I am going to be talking to Pottery Queen. TikTok star Shelby Sherratt,
owner of The Pottage and ceramics superstar. We are going to be having the event on Friday the 8th
of May. Doors will open about five, quarter past five, and we will start talking from about 5.30.
Hosted at the old Apollo fish and chip shop to everybody in Ballarat who’s listening.
For everyone else that’s on Victoria Street in Ballarat East, we’ll be going to Kittlete’s.
Kittlete’s Cakes. Kittlety’s yummy, delicious treats will be available for everyone who comes
along. Tickets are on sale now. You can head to our website, makewiththingshappen.com.au.
You will find a link through to the Crafting Conversation page and they are $25 each.
They are very limited because it’s kind of a soft launch of Sarah Kittlety’s new store. It’s not a
massive place, but we wanted to have a nice location for this very special event, which I’m really
looking forward to. Sounds amazing. And that’s this week’s events breakdown.
Good job.
This week I, well, we also did, speaking of Ballarat,
launch a very nice single-page website for a local artist. called Charmaine Channels to highlight
her exhibition that’s coming up from the Saturday the 2nd of May at the Old Butcher Shop Gallery in
Ballarat. Charmaine has artfully interpreted buildings of historic Ballarat into portraits of
women. It’s called The Grand Old Dames of Ballarat. If you do get a look at the website,
treasuresmith.com.au, which is Charmaine’s other business, you will see the details there.
That was a fun project to work on I felt. I’m all for one page websites from now on. I want more
one-page websites. I think we were both very happy to work on a one-page website in the middle of
going live with lots of other very in-depth multi-page websites, which is usually how most
websites go. Not having to check any internal linking structure is very helpful.
If that is something that you just feel like you need for yourself and if you don’t know why you
would need one, well, we treated this as like a bit of a digital flyer for the exhibition.
It gives all the information that people need to be able to find. The show, a little sneak peek of
the work, which is very intriguing, I have to say. Lots of incredible detail, very expressive
portraits. I know that Charmaine’s also framed them with vintage frames, which I think is very
cool. But it works really well for that purpose, but it also then creates a foundation for when
Charmaine’s ready to build a larger site. A large part of setting up a website is a lot of that
back-end infrastructure.
software configuring all the the bits and pieces that you need to connecting the domain and the DNS
settings and all of those bits. That kind of needs to be done regardless of whether your website’s
one page or 20 pages. But the good thing is once it’s done, then therefore the rest of the site can
kind of flow on from there. So if you need a bit of a pamphlet site to get you started, just get in
touch because it’s definitely something we’re looking at maybe offering as a bit of a package. At
the moment, all of our website work is bespoke, custom quoting and very much in consultation with
you. But we’re starting to… see a little bit of a market for something a little bit more out of
the box, I think. Click and collect.
Click and collect. Yeah. Click and collect website. All of the links that we’ve mentioned in this
week’s episode will be on the show notes on our website, makegoodthingshappen.com.au. Thank you,
Renee, for joining me. We will be back next week with another episode.
Well, next week’s a special episode to celebrate Fashion Revolution Week. We absolutely love,
as you probably know, championing small business. And so this really fits right into that with the
slow fashion maker movement. Stay tuned for our take on that next week.
Bye. Bye. listening to Make Good Things Happen. If you enjoyed this episode,
why not write a review or share it with a friend? For show notes and more, head to mgth.com.au.
This has been a Dalton Baker production.

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