Comments by "Shawn Fumo" (@ShawnFumo) on "I Deep Faked Myself, Here's Why It Matters" video.

@@user-ze2zm4sz1byou don’t actually need NFTs for this. What you can do is use digital signatures. For a photo, the camera takes the original raw image and use a one-way hash. Basically taking the entire image data and metadata (time, location, etc) and create a small sequence of data. If even one bit of the original was different, it’d change the resulting hash. Then the camera uses a secret key to encrypt that hash, which can be then be decrypted by a known public key of the manufacturer. So now you can decrypt that hash and compare it to a hash of the current image and make sure they’re the same. If they are, it is exactly the image the camera took, unless the secret key was stolen somehow. Then if you need to prove the authenticity, you can keep the old file around (like having the negatives with a film camera). The only issue is that the different manufacturers need to build this into the cameras. Though you could sign any image you want yourself. It wouldn’t prove that you made it originally and that it wasn’t a deepfake by you or someone before you, but it’d still prove that you signed it. So the White House could sign any images or videos to prove they are approved by the gov. That could help for that Ukraine example, where it’d be suspicious if it wasn’t signed by the Ukraine gov. But that still needs its own infrastructure. We have SSL (https) built into websites, but our image viewers/players aren’t checking signatures to warn us. And re-encoding a pic/video would kill a signature. When you upload a png file to Facebook, they turn it into a lower quality jpeg, YouTube makes multiple versions of videos at diff bitrates, etc. YouTube could tell you that the original was signed by X. You’d have to trust them (unless they let you download the original file), but it’d still be better than what we have now. I think Blockchain is trickier since while it could show a chain of custody, it can’t show you how a file was modified at each step unless you store all the versions somewhere, which could be large. And if you store it centrally, you don’t need blockchain since you can just sign each version and stick them all in one file anyway. Hopefully diff companies will start to figure out some kind of standard as we get more and more fakes happening. It took a while for secure websites to become the norm. We just don’t have a ton of time considering how fast this is all moving.
38
@chazmuzz Yeah, though it doesn’t even have to be blockchain. The easiest thing (which we should pressure companies for) is the manufactures of cameras/camcorders to digitally sign the raw files. That way if you kept the the equivalent of a film negative, you have some pretty good proof of authenticity. It certainly doesn’t solve all the problems, but it’d be a good first step. And I’m guessing YouTube, Facebook, etc keep the originals that were uploaded to them, even if they give out compressed versions. They could validate the original signature and sign the new compressed one with their own signature, perhaps with some description of how it was edited (like taking just a portion of an original video, or changing contrast on an image), and a copy of the original signature. In that scenario, you need to trust YouTube and Facebook, but is better than nothing. And then you know which service it came from and law enforcement can ask them for the original file.
4
@exlied7280 it is tough since it is already at the point that most of these tools are not just free, but their source code is available to compile or even modify yourself. And even if that wasn’t there, a lot of the advances are described in published research papers. It is hard to get it back into the box.
2
This is a good point, though I definitely think there are opportunities to improve the situation without going too far. Camera manufacturers can digitally sign original files, so there can be the equivalent of “negatives” to check back with. As with film negatives, they can be lost/destroyed, but are helpful when trying to prove something is authentic. And software like Lightroom could sign an image edited with it, along with some info on the original image’s signature. Like that the hash of the original image and that it was signed by Sony. It could be configured to pass through certain data, but does need privacy. Like saying the originally signed image was in Boston vs someone’s actual home coordinates. And you can sign that image before uploading to social media and Facebook can sign it as it makes its own compressed version. It isn’t perfect since you need to trust each of the steps and you may purposefully be losing some info at each step for privacy. But still could help things. If any image/viewer displayed signatures, it’d be a start. Like if Ukraine always signed videos, it’d be suspicious if Instagram said the original upload wasn’t signed by them. And if a random image in Discord was signed by Facebook with their handle, a journalist could message that user to ask if they have the original picture from the camera, etc.
2
The trickiest part is keeping that chain from the manufacturer to a small file on social media, considering the sizes involved. An original video file can be huge. Usually you’d be editing it before uploading it anywhere and a non-professional may not keep the original footage around. Something like Adobe Premiere could keep track of all the cuts with time codes and the signatures of the original files, but it gets a bit involved for them to implement. And if you didn’t keep the original files, it still just proves that you edited some clips on a certain date. Though still an improvement.
1