Tech article
After a deepfake voice fooled her grandfather, this founder sprang into action
Publisher description: After her grandfather was scammed by a deepfake of his brother's voice, Tarini Padmanabhuni founded DetectifAI, a San Francisco startup building AI models small enough to run directly on smartphones and flag fake voices in real time, and it's now one of the companies competing in Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt.
TechCrunch | Sep 28, 2026 | Connie Loizos
Automated excerpt
There’s no shortage of competition in deepfake voice detection, from companies such as Reality Defender, Pindrop, Resemble AI, Microsoft Azure AI Content Safety, and Nuance (which Microsoft also owns). The aim is to deliver an instant verdict on whether a voice is AI-generated during calls, in voice messages, and in other audio, without the audio ever leaving the device. DetectifAI is selling first to phone manufacturers, licensing its software tools so that detection can ship as a built-in feature of the phone’s operating system.
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