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.
In a world where any image or video can be generated, chain of custody to a real-world ground-truth will be vitally important.
This will become indispensable sooner than anyone imagines or wants it to.
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!
Bonus feature: new display devices get better trained / new AI features for free
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
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
Likewise depth fields and other potential forms of sensor augmentation.
For the long time digital cameras embedded in EXIF metadata about conditions on which the photo was made. Like camera model, focal length, exposure time etc
Nowadays this metadata should be extended with description of AI postprocessing operations.
Of course. But to ensure that's valid for multiple purposes we need a secure boot chain, and the infrastructure for it.
To get there we need an AI arms race. People trying to detect AI art with machine learning vs. increasing AI sophistication. Companies trying to discourage AI leaks of company secrets and reduce liability (and reduce the tragic cost of mistakes of course) vs. employees being human.
Or we could have built a responsible and reasonable government that can debate and implement that.
Maybe I'm naive.
In the meantime, it's playtime for the AIs. Bring your fucking poo bags, theyre shitting everywhere (1), pack it in, pack it out.
(1) what the world didnt know, was that this was beautiful too.
Or we can just recognize the lunacy of it and opt out of caring. You can't stop the flood, so you just learn to live with it. With the right view, the flood becomes unimportant.
What measures can the government implement to combat this? AI image modification is realistically possible even on consumer hardware running locally. There is no going back.
Some image formats (e.g. HEIF) already allow to store multiple images in the same file.
This "future" is present in current Pixel lineup btw. Photos are tagged as unblured, so for now you can still safely take a selfie with your friends.
Photos taken by cell phone cameras increasingly can't be trusted as evidence of the state of something. Let's say you take a picture of a car that just hit a pedestrian and is driving away.
Pre-AI, your picture might be a bit blurry, but say, it's discernible that one of the headlights had a chunk taken out of it; it's only a few pixels, but there's obviously some damage, like a hole from a rock or a pellet gun. Police find a suspect, see the car, note damage to the headlight that looks very close, get a warrant for records from the suspect, find incriminating texts or whatnot, and boom, person goes to jail for killing someone (assuming this isn't the US, where people almost never go to jail for assault, manslaughter, or homicide with a car) because the judge or jury are shown photos from the scene, taken by detectives in the street of the person's driveway, and then from evidence techs nice and close-up.
Post-"AI" bullshit, the AI sees what looks like a car headlight, assumes the few-pixels damage is dust on the sensor/lens or noise, and "fixes" the image, removing it and turning it into a perfect-looking headlight.
Or, how about the inverse? A defense attorney can now argue that a cell phone camera photo can't be relied upon as evidence because of all the manipulation that goes on. That backpack in a photo someone takes as a mugger runs away? Maybe the phone's algorithm thought a glint of light was a logo and extrapolated it into the shape of a popular athletic brand's logo.
Yeah, but in the future the government will know your precise location, all day, every day, so at least you'll have an alibi.
AI isn't the thing to be worried about. People with power abusing AI is the thing to be worried about.
Sounds like pretty standard forensic science, like bite marks and fingerprints.
If any of you young folks haven't watched Ghost in the Shell, just close this tab and do that.
http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_...
You got a friend, spouse or someone close that has hundreds of pictures of you on their phone. Their phone has a "AI chip" that is used to finetune the recognition models and photo models with your AI library. Like Google Photos tags images of people you know, so does the model. It also helps sharpen images - you moved your head in an image and it was a bit blurry, but the model just fixed it, because like the original model had for the moon, it has hundreds of pictures of you to compensate.
One day, that person witnesses a robbery. They try and take a photo of the robber, but the algorithm determines it was you on the photo and fixes it up to apply your face. Congratulations, you are now a robber.