4 ms·

It seems fairly easy to bake a chain of custody into your images. Sensor outputs a signed raw image, AI outputs a different signed “touched up” image. We can af

It seems fairly easy to bake a chain of custody into your images. Sensor outputs a signed raw image, AI outputs a different signed “touched up” image. We can afford to keep both in this hypothetical future; use whichever one you want. Once generative AI really takes off we will need some system for unambiguously proving where an image/video came from; the solution is quite obvious in this case and many have sketched it already.

jfim 4y ago
Until some PM says "why do we have both images, our data shows that 99.5% of users don't use the raw image, let's remove that feature."
- theptip 4y ago
  And the answer is “spam filters and AI personal curation agents will drop any image without chain of custody from every feed that claims to be about reality”. In a world where any image or video can be generated, chain of custody to a real-world ground-truth will be vitally important.
  - JeremyBanks 4y ago
    [dead]
  - namtab00 4y ago
    I've been saying this to myself too many times now... This will become indispensable sooner than anyone imagines or wants it to.
  - radlad 4y ago
    Will film cameras see a revival?
    - theptip 4y ago
      I think anything analog is going to be suspect; you can take a photo of a digital image and it could look like a real analog image. Absent a chain of custody (perhaps including GPS baked into the signed image data blob), I think analog artifacts will become untrustable. Unless you can physically date them to pre-generative era!
- tonymillion 4y ago
  Simple solution: keep the raw image and AI it on the fly (this is a hypothetical future remember) Bonus feature: new display devices get better trained / new AI features for free
  - account42 4y ago
    So now not only are there AI-imagined details in your images but those details are also different depending on which device the image is viewed on. Lovely.
    - tonymillion 4y ago
      Or no AI enhancements, since you have the raw photo sensor data, even better you can pick your own AI algorithms to apply to the image. E.g. from the raw data we know the sensor, we can train a specific AI to enhance the image from the known physical properties of the CCD
- cyanydeez 4y ago
  In a functional government, that data is mandated And regulated
bayindirh 4y ago
The images generated by SLR and mirrorless cameras are already signed with device embedded keys during EXIF embedding. Every manufacturer sells such verification systems to law enforcement or other institutions to verify such images. Sometimes there are exploits which extract these keys from the cameras themselves, but I don't hear them nowadays. One of the older products: https://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/software/img_auth/index.htm https://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/software/img_auth/index.htm
7jjjjjjj 4y ago
Then someone takes a photo of their TV screen. Presto, instant chain of custody for any image you want!
- theptip 4y ago
  It’s a fair point but with high enough resolution (and perhaps GPS baked into the trusted data) I suspect it would be very hard to actually forge a digital image from an analog source. Likewise depth fields and other potential forms of sensor augmentation.

jfim 4y ago

Until some PM says "why do we have both images, our data shows that 99.5% of users don't use the raw image, let's remove that feature."

theptip 4y ago
And the answer is “spam filters and AI personal curation agents will drop any image without chain of custody from every feed that claims to be about reality”. In a world where any image or video can be generated, chain of custody to a real-world ground-truth will be vitally important.
- JeremyBanks 4y ago
  [dead]
- namtab00 4y ago
  I've been saying this to myself too many times now... This will become indispensable sooner than anyone imagines or wants it to.
- radlad 4y ago
  Will film cameras see a revival?
  - theptip 4y ago
    I think anything analog is going to be suspect; you can take a photo of a digital image and it could look like a real analog image. Absent a chain of custody (perhaps including GPS baked into the signed image data blob), I think analog artifacts will become untrustable. Unless you can physically date them to pre-generative era!
tonymillion 4y ago
Simple solution: keep the raw image and AI it on the fly (this is a hypothetical future remember) Bonus feature: new display devices get better trained / new AI features for free
- account42 4y ago
  So now not only are there AI-imagined details in your images but those details are also different depending on which device the image is viewed on. Lovely.
  - tonymillion 4y ago
    Or no AI enhancements, since you have the raw photo sensor data, even better you can pick your own AI algorithms to apply to the image. E.g. from the raw data we know the sensor, we can train a specific AI to enhance the image from the known physical properties of the CCD
cyanydeez 4y ago
In a functional government, that data is mandated And regulated

bayindirh 4y ago

The images generated by SLR and mirrorless cameras are already signed with device embedded keys during EXIF embedding. Every manufacturer sells such verification systems to law enforcement or other institutions to verify such images. Sometimes there are exploits which extract these keys from the cameras themselves, but I don't hear them nowadays. One of the older products: https://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/software/img_auth/index.htm https://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/software/img_auth/index.htm

7jjjjjjj 4y ago

Then someone takes a photo of their TV screen. Presto, instant chain of custody for any image you want!

theptip 4y ago
It’s a fair point but with high enough resolution (and perhaps GPS baked into the trusted data) I suspect it would be very hard to actually forge a digital image from an analog source. Likewise depth fields and other potential forms of sensor augmentation.