Distinguishing authentic human-produced media from deepfakes or other algorithmically generated media is notoriously difficult. Existing tools produce a probability that given media is generated, but certainty is elusive. In the coming years, verifying the authenticity of political and election-related media will become critical as algorithmic media and deepfakes have flooded online spaces. Aside from sifting through online mis-or-disinformation, there’s also value in establishing authenticity for artists who want to assert claims of originality over their digital works.
The kinds of things one might need to know to understand if a digital image or video is authentic, and not artificially generated or copied, might include:
- Some sort of cryptographically secure signature verifying the integrity of media metadata like camera information, coordinates, and other things
- Some way of knowing that the media was not substantially digitally altered from its original form, or if it was, what those alterations were
There is a solution to that. Below I’ll talk about the following: