I’m finding it harder and harder to tell whether an image has been generated or not (the main giveaways are disappearing). This is probably going to become a big problem in like half a year’s time. Does anyone know of any proof of legitimacy projects that are gaining traction? I can imagine news orgs being the first to be hit by this problem. Are they working on anything?
Negative proof: the AI company signs it with their watermark.
Positive proof: the photographer signs it with their personal key, providing a way to contact them. Sure, it could be a fake identity, but you can attempt to verify and conclude that.
Cumulative positive and negative proof: on top of the photographer, news organizations add their signatures and remarks (e.g. BBC: “we know and trust this person”, Guardian: “we verified the scene”, Reuters: “we tried to verify this photo, but the person could not be contacted”).
The photo, in the end, would not be just a bitmap, but a container file containing the bitmap (possibly with a steganographically embedded watermark) and various signatures granting or withdrawing trust.
Isn’t that more like trusting your source though, which media companies either do or don’t do already.
It would be a method of representing trust or distrust in a structured way that’s automatically accessible to the end user.
The user could right-click an image, pick “check trust” from a menu, and be presented with a list of metainfo to see who has originally signed it, and what various parties have concluded about it.