N4T Investigators: Company that uses AI to catch shoplifters caught trying to hire actors for news interviews

By Chorus Nylander

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    TUCSON, Arizona (KVOA) — It’s an age-old problem that is desperate for a modern solution, shoplifting has become a growing problem for business owners across the country.

The News 4 Tucson Investigators recently reported on how vandalism and shoplifting have been impacting local small business owners.

“They come in all the time, we have to follow them through the store, we ask them nicely to leave sometimes they fight. They’re coming in here and stealing left and right,” said Donna Wilkinson who works at the Speedway Antique Mall.

So the News 4 Tucson Investigators were intrigued when we heard about a French startup called Veesion that uses artificial intelligence technology to try and catch shoplifters in the act.

Veesion told us they had clients in the Tucson area so we were ready to see the product in action and report on it.

As we were getting just days away from our scheduled interview, we discovered a casting call on a popular casting website from Veesion.

It was an ad seeking middle-aged men who would pretend to be business owners during interviews with a TV reporter and talk about how Veesion changed their lives.

The casting call offered $75 for two hours of work and specifically mentioned our scheduled interview as well as interviews with reporters in San Antonio, Texas, and Virginia.

Of course, we canceled our interview.

Only a few hours after alerting Veesion CEO Ben Keonig about the ad it was removed.

Keonig told News 4 Tucson’s Chief Investigative Reporter Chorus Nylander in a text message that he did place the ad because a client backed out at the last minute.

He wrote, “It was a big mistake and it will never happen again. I am deeply sorry for this. In all past segments, people are of course the actual owners, Let me know if you need assistance to verify that information.”

The News 4 Tucson Investigators spoke with Kelly McBride, the Senior Vice President of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute, which is a non-profit that serves as a resource on journalism ethics.

“That’s complete deception, that’s fabricating something that’s not real,” McBride said.

She said these practices to try and market its product makes her question every aspect of Veesion’s business.

“Now I want to talk to everybody who’s doing business with them and see what they know and when they knew it,” she said.

With the advancement of AI tech, she worries the lines between truth and fiction have never been so jaded.

“It’s possible we’re going to get to a point very quickly, where there’s so much fake information out there that people just stop believing in the ability to discern the truth,” she explained.

The News 4 Tucson Investigators reached out to other reporters who had already published stories on Veesion.

An investigative reporter in Phoenix was concerned to see the casting call and did a deep dive to try and verify the store owner they interviewed. They were confident the owner was real based on business license records.

The News 4 Tucson Investigators were able to look further into a store owner interviewed by the NBC affiliate in San Francisco and were able to verify they were actually the store’s owner.

We have some questions regarding a few other store owners who were interviewed by other news stations. We reached out to Keonig to take him up on his offer to help verify store owners but he did not respond.

“Red flag number two,” McBride said.

The News 4 Tucson Investigators would never knowingly use actors in our stories and while it’s clear that Veesion tried hiring them for our interview we have found no indication its product does not work as portrayed.

If you have a story you’d like the News 4 Tucson Investigators to look into email us at investigators@kvoa.com or call our tip line at 520-955-4444.

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