Aug 24, 2026 · 1h 37m
Deepfakes drain corporate cash while Guzman y Gomez posts blowout profits
GYG’s Blowout Result, Adir’s Luggage Startup, Sydney's Pullman Five and Culture Amp’s AI Fight
As artificial intelligence tools accelerate corporate fraud and data scraping, businesses must radically rethink security and customer privacy.
- 1Executive deepfakes pose an immediate financial threat to companies, illustrated by a fourteen million dollar Zoom scam.
- 2Culture Amp is sparking privacy debates by updating terms to use customer data for training artificial intelligence models.
- 3Guzman y Gomez delivered an impressive forty percent profit growth, though complex lease accounting obscures the true numbers.
Don't miss
Adir Shiffman warns of a company losing fourteen million dollars to a sophisticated Zoom call deepfake of their CEO.
The brief
Hosts Adam Schwab and Adir Shiffman break down the week in business, starting with how a repetitive strain injury led to a productivity breakthrough using OpenAI's Whisper dictation tool.
The hosts raise alarms over corporate security, highlighting a shocking case where a company lost fourteen million dollars after being targeted by a highly sophisticated executive Zoom deepfake.
The debate turns to data privacy ethics as Culture Amp faces scrutiny for updating its terms of use, effectively opting customers into having their data used to train artificial intelligence models.
Fast-food giant Guzman y Gomez posts blowout financial results with a forty percent profit jump, though the hosts critique how complex lease accounting standards obscure the true balance sheet.
Adir Shiffman shares his two-year journey launching Tanzu, a premium luggage startup, detailing the engineering hurdles of designing custom skateboard-style wheels for suitcases.
What was said on this episode
28 statements · 13 positive · 9 negative · 1 mixed · 5 neutral
Whisper provides high-quality voice transcription and improves wording automatically.
“this thing is like very good. And also like, it adds words.”
Listen at 3:29
Whisper transcribes Adam Schwab’s speech at roughly 200 words per minute accurately.
“mine was sort of hovering around the 200 words a minute mark. And it was getting it pretty accurately.”
Listen at 4:26
Constant contactability reduces children’s freedom compared with earlier generations.
“being endlessly contactable does not give kids the kind of freedom that maybe we grew up with”
Listen at 11:14
Continuous location tracking increases Adir Shiffman’s parental anxiety.
“the fact that I can track where my kids are all the time does not ease my anxiety. I think it increases my anxiety”
Listen at 12:01
JFK Airport’s Uber pickup requires a lengthy AirTrain journey after arrival.
“if you're going to land at jfk, be very aware about the fact that is a long train ride to the thing”
Listen at 13:13
A taxi charged a 55% premium over Uber for Adam Schwab’s Sydney trip.
“How can a taxi charge a 55% premium to an Uber?”
Listen at 14:51
Large airlines can have vulnerable onboard systems that hackers can quickly disrupt.
“these very large organizations still have unbelievably vulnerable systems on their planes. That they can be brought down like that.”
Listen at 23:34
Senior executives should audit their online information to reduce impersonation risk.
“go and Google yourself, go and look deeply, go and figure out what people could know about you and how they could construct a version of you that they could impersonate.”
Listen at 29:22
Deepfake-enabled identity impersonation is emerging as society’s biggest information-security risk.
“this is emerging as the single biggest infosec risk that exists in society with the emergence of deep fakes.”
Listen at 29:32
Companies should authenticate payment instructions outside the originating platform.
“what you need to do is go outside that platform that's being used to provide the instruction and authenticate some other way either with a phone call or with a formalized structure where there's like two factor authentication to authorize it”
Listen at 31:53
Finance-team authorization processes are a major vulnerability for payment fraud.
“this is like really the huge infosec vulnerability. It's around the finance team and payments fraud”
Listen at 32:09
The presumption of innocence requires treating accused people as not guilty until judicial resolution.
“one of those is the presumption of innocence. And that means that someone that's accused of a crime is not guilty of that crime until it's gone through the court process”
Listen at 39:17
NRL’s no-fault stand-down policy applies after charges carrying at least eleven years’ imprisonment.
“you need to be charged with a crime that carries a minimum of 11 years”
Listen at 45:02
Culture Amp changed its terms to opt customers into anonymized data use for AI training.
“they've changed their terms of use to effectively, I think, opt in their customers to having anonymized data used for training their AI models.”
Listen at 48:13
Google acquired Spirit Airlines’ historical emails for AI training data.
“Google has all those emails from Spirit Airlines. Yeah, I think that.”
Listen at 49:50
AI-era anonymization is less reliable than previously assumed.
“that assumption of anonymization in an AI era is not as robust as it was previously.”
Listen at 54:34
Companies should compensate customers when monetizing customer-provided data for AI.
“If they're getting benefit from data that someone's actually ready paid to give them, they should be giving something back for it”
Listen at 57:00
Companies should explicitly decide and transparently disclose how customer data supports AI training.
“if you run a company, you should sit down very purposefully and think about what you're going to do with customer data. Are you going to use it for training? Are you going to let them opt out or not? I'm not advocating one way or the other. Be transparent about it.”
Listen at 58:21
GYG’s network sales increased 18 percent during the year.
“network sales was up 18%.”
Listen at 59:12
GYG’s underlying EBITDA rose from $66 million to $85 million, a 28 percent increase.
“Underlying EBITDA. This was a great story. This went from 66 million to 85 million, up 28% of the year.”
Listen at 59:36
GYG drive-through stores generate roughly 60–70 percent more profit than non-drive-through stores.
“their drive thru stores make significantly more profit. I think their drive thru stores make 70, 60, 70% more profit than the non drive thru stores.”
Listen at 1:08:54
GYG’s food and packaging costs grew slower than revenue, indicating scale benefits.
“22% revenue growth only resulted in 9% growth in cost of food and packaging.”
Listen at 1:12:58
Adir Shiffman does not recommend buying GYG at a 64-times earnings multiple.
“I don't think it's a good enough business to buy at 64 times earnings.”
Listen at 1:16:48
GYG can probably sustain approximately 30 percent growth.
“I think they can probably grow at 30% consistently.”
Listen at 1:17:22
GYG remains investable at its current price, though valuation is approaching the upper end.
“this is a very investable company still at this price, but it's getting towards the top end.”
Listen at 1:20:49
Tunsu is positioned as premium luggage priced around $890 per suitcase.
“the suitcase is kind of $890. So it's not, it's not cheap luggage luggage. It's like premium luggage.”
Listen at 1:26:08
Tunsu’s initial production run consists of 1,000 suitcases.
“we're going to make a thousand to begin with.”
Listen at 1:28:31
Tunsu aims to offer a better luggage product while charging a premium price.
“I'm going to make a much better product than exists on the market today and I'm going to charge a premium for it.”
Listen at 1:32:56
Statements are attributed to the speaker as said on the episode and reflect their view at the time, not PodLume's. They are not advice.