So I got this email purporting to be from Gale Kal, VP of Regional AI Sales for a company called KwikTrust:
Hi Kevin,
As I woke up to the morning news about Georgetown Law receiving a record-breaking 30 million donation, I couldn’t help but think of your remarkable journey, Kevin. Your leadership as the Partner at Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P. has been instrumental in shaping the legal landscape, and I’m thrilled to see your team’s continued success.
I came across an article highlighting your colleague, Paul Vogel, being promoted to Partner at Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P. It’s inspiring to see your team’s growth and commitment to excellence. As I delved deeper, I noticed an alleged Ponzi scheme involving Chicago Latinos, which resonated with your firm’s focus on legal sense and science. It’s crucial for firms like yours to stay vigilant and adapt to evolving market dynamics.
At KwikTrust, we’re committed to empowering legal professionals like yourself with innovative solutions. Our blockchain-based digital signature service offers unparalleled security and flexibility, aligning with your firm’s commitment to cutting-edge practices. I’d love to discuss how our services can support your team’s endeavors and address any challenges you’re currently facing.
Let’s initiate a chat to explore how KwikTrust can help you stay ahead of the curve. Please click the link below to schedule a meeting.
Gale Kal
VP of Regional AI Sales
KwikTrust
Let’s break this down a little.
Hi, Kevin,
As I woke up to the morning news about Georgetown Law receiving a record-breaking 30 million donation, I couldn’t help but think of your remarkable journey, Kevin. Your leadership as the Partner at Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P. has been instrumental in shaping the legal landscape, and I’m thrilled to see your team’s continued success.
Always great to have my name in bold, something I may start doing every time I write it. But it goes downhill from there. It is true that (1) I graduated from Georgetown Law and (2) it has received a record-breaking $30 million donation. But neither of these events is especially recent. The first one definitely isn’t, and the donation happened almost a year ago. Has Gale Kal been thinking about me and my remarkable journey ever since June 2023, if not longer? That’d be a little disturbing, frankly. Or was Gale just reminded of this thought recently because they were going back through their dream journal or something and were motivated to take action now? That’d be … slightly less disturbing?
More to the point, I’m eager to learn what about the record-breaking $30 million donation caused Gale to think of me and my remarkable journey. Because it may not surprise you to learn that this amount is approximately $30 million more than the total donations I have made to Georgetown Law since my graduation. Oh, maybe that’s what’s remarkable? See the forthcoming memoir, “My Remarkable Journey to Zero Donations,” by Kevin Underhill.
To be fair to me, I have bought a couple of Georgetown sweatshirts, and they weren’t cheap, either, so I’ve been assuming some portion of the giant markup went to support the school. Now, will that fund a new building like the $30 million donation supposedly will? No, but it’s not like I haven’t done anything. Still, I’m not really seeing the link here. But then I read on.
Your leadership as the Partner at Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P. has been instrumental in shaping the legal landscape, and I’m thrilled to see your team’s continued success.
Again, questionable. If this person had actually been monitoring Shook, Hardy & Bacon, they would presumably know that (1) the firm has more than one partner and (2) we have a strict rule against capitalizing things like “Partner” for no reason, or at least I have that rule. The person would also know that although I absolutely have demonstrated leadership, at least in the sense that I make sure I’m first out the door when the fire alarm goes off, it would be an exaggeration to say that has “shaped the legal landscape.” “My” team has had “continued success,” I think it’s fair to say, but I’m still not sure why this person cares. Maybe there’s another connection?
I came across an article highlighting your colleague, Paul Vogel, being promoted to Partner at Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P. It’s inspiring to see your team’s growth and commitment to excellence. As I delved deeper, I noticed an alleged Ponzi scheme involving Chicago Latinos, which resonated with your firm’s focus on legal sense and science. It’s crucial for firms like yours to stay vigilant and adapt to evolving market dynamics.
My colleague, Paul Vogel, was indeed recently promoted to partner. But he doesn’t go around capitalizing it for no reason, as you can see from his impressive bio. We are of course on the same “team,” or at least in the same firm. But I want to emphasize that neither of us is somehow mixed up in “an alleged Ponzi scheme involving Chicago Latinos,” which is where this thing really goes off the rails.
There was, it turns out, an alleged Ponzi scheme involving Chicago Latinos (see “Were You a Victim of an Alleged Ponzi Scheme Involving Chicago Latinos?” Latin Times (May 24, 2023)), but I had nothing to do with that and I’m pretty sure Paul didn’t either (although now that I think about it, he didn’t deny it when I asked him). That scheme apparently involved fraudulent claims about crypto, an interesting coincidence given that Kwiktrust seems to be a crypto company, or at least it used to be, or maybe it does NFTs, or “SuperNFTs,” or some other blockchain-related hoodoo. Coincidentally, it turns out the blockchain thing is exactly what Gale Kal wants to chat with me about:
At KwikTrust, we’re committed to empowering legal professionals like yourself with innovative solutions. Our blockchain-based digital signature service offers unparalleled security and flexibility, aligning with your firm’s commitment to cutting-edge practices. I’d love to discuss how our services can support your team’s endeavors and address any challenges you’re currently facing.
Well, it all sounds terrific, I just need to know how to learn more.
Let’s initiate a chat to explore how KwikTrust can help you stay ahead of the curve. Please click the link below to schedule a meeting.
On second thought, let’s not do that, and I certainly was not about to click any link that had even been in the same room as this email. Because, obviously, this was all just AI-generated garbage text that KwikTrust, if it is a real company, may have had nothing to do with.
For one thing, I now know that many other Partners (and possibly all Lawyers) in our firm got an email with a very similar tone and structure but different details. This of course is a hallmark of AI-generated garbage text, because a generative artificial “intelligence” is just a bot trained to stick words and phrases together in a way that simulates human writing, with no idea what it’s actually doing or whether the details make any sense. That’s how we end up with things like “alleged Ponzi scheme involving Chicago Latinos.” (I mean, that’s why it’s in the email, that’s not what caused the Ponzi scheme. Аs far as I know.)
And, if one actually reads to the bottom of these emails, one finds this paragraph:
Kalendar.AI sales agents have written & sent this email on behalf of KwikTrust as they’ve requested us to send this to you. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, simply unsubscribe to never hear from them again, respond to them here, or let us know if you find any errors in the AI content generation with your kind, big heart…. Our mission is to help businesses create opportunities, particularly helping small businesses to thrive with the help of AI-driven stories. We strictly comply with CCPA, GDPR, and CAN-SPAM laws. You can opt-out of our data processing anytime. We are Kalendar Inc, located at 450 Lexington Ave. New York, NY 10017.
Kalendar Inc. is in fact a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in New York. According to the Kalendar.AI website, what it does is offer other companies AI “sales agents” that “autonomously drive meetings, sign-ups, and revenue” with “personalized email ads.” These agents use a “trained AI-mailbox infrastructure to avoid spam”—which plainly means “to avoid spam filters.” They “compose personalized emails at scale using key highlights,” such as the target’s possible involvement with a Ponzi scheme targeting Chicago Latinos, in order to convince said target to connect with Kalendar’s customer.
The site then encourages you to “hire our ‘Kal’ family of agents,” listing as examples “Jordan Kal, Head of AI Engagement,” “Blaise Kal, Director of AI Strategy,” “Aurelia Kal, VP of AI Outreach,” and “Talos Kal, VP of AI Personas.” And, I assume, also “Gale Kal, VP of Regional AI Sales.” In short, this company uses AI to create spam posing as emails from people who aren’t real telling you things that aren’t necessarily true in hopes of fooling your spam filters. Great, what a leap forward. Generative AI may have its uses, but I hate this one.
I do have a kind, big heart, but still.