5 ms·

I think you have a bit backwards. If you want to publish pixels on a screen there should be no assumption that they represent real events. If you want to publi

by mazlix 3y ago

I think you have a bit backwards. If you want to publish pixels on a screen there should be no assumption that they represent real events. If you want to publish proof of an event, you should have some pixels on a screen along with some cryptographic signature from a device sensor that would necessitate atleast a big corporation like Nikon / Sony / etc. being "in on it" to fake. Also since no one likes RAW footage it should probably just be you post your edited version which may have "AI" upscaling / de-noising / motion blur fixing etc, AND you can post a link to your cryptographically signed verifiable RAW footage. Of course there's still ways around that like your footage could just be a camera being pointed at an 8k screen or something but at least you make some serious hurdles and have a reasonable argument to the video being a result of photons bouncing off real objects hitting your camera sensor.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> If you want to publish proof of an event, you should have some pixels on a screen along with some cryptographic signature from a device sensor that would necessitate atleast a big corporation like Nikon / Sony / etc. being "in on it" to fake. At which point nobody could verify anything that happened with any existing camera, including all past events as of today and all future events captured with any existing camera. Then someone will publish a way to extract the key from some new camera model, both allowing anyone to forge anything by extracting a key and using it to sign whatever they want, and calling into question everything actually taken with that camera model/manufacturer. Meanwhile cheap cameras will continue to be made that don't even support RAW, and people will capture real events with them because they were in hand when the events unexpectedly happened. Which is the most important use case because footage taken by a staff photographer at a large media company with a professional camera can already be authenticated by a big corporation, specifically the large media company.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  I think at minimum YouTube could tag existing footage uploaded before 2015 as very unlikely to be AI generated.
  - bandrami 2y ago
    The first (acknowledged) deepfake video is from 1997
    - BeFlatXIII 2y ago
      Hence, "unlikely" instead of "guaranteed real."
- miki123211 2y ago
  also the three letter agencies (not just from the US) will have access to private keys of at least some manufacturers, allowing them to authenticate fake events and sow chaos by strategically leaking keys for cameras that recorded something they really don't like.
  - eek2121 2y ago
    For all the folks that bash the United States for "reasons" this one gave me a chuckle. Our handling of privacy and data and such is absolute ass, but at least we *can* hide our data from big government with little repercussion in most cases (translation: you aren't actively being investigated for a crime that a judge isn't aware of) Of course that says nothing about the issues of corruption of judges in the court system, but that is a "relatively" new issues that DOES absolutely need to be addressed. (Shoot one could argue that the way certain folks are behaving right now is in itself unconstitutional and those folks should be booted) Countries all over the world (EVEN IN EUROPE WITH THE GDPR) are a lot less "gracious" with anonymous communication. The UK actually has been trying to outlaw private encryption, for a while now, as an example, but there are worse examples from certain other countries. You can find them by examining their political system, most (all? I did quit a bit of research, but also was not interested in spending a ton of time on this topic) are "conservative leaning" Note that I'm not talking just about existing policy, but countries that are continually trying to enact new policy. Just like the US has "guarantees" on free speech, the right to vote, etc. The world needs guaranteed access to freedom of speech, religion, right to vote, healthcare, food, water, shelter, electricity, and medical care. I don't know of a single country in the world, including the US, that does anywhere close to a good of job with that. I'm actually hoping that Ukraine is given both the motive and opportunity to push the boundaries in that regard. If you've been following some of the policy stuff, it is a step in the right direction. I 100% know they won't even come close to getting the job done, but they are definitely moving in the right direction. I definitely do not support this war, but with all of the death and destruction, at least there is a tiny little pinprick of light... ...Even if a single country in the world got everything right, we still need to find a way to unite everyone. Our time in this universe is limited and our time on earth more-so. We should have been working together 60 years ago for a viable off-planet colony and related stuff. If the world ended tomorrow, humanity would cease to exist. You need over 100,000 people to sustain the human race in the event a catastrophic event wipes almost everyone out. Even if we had 1,000 people in space, our species would be doomed. I am really super surprised that basic survival needs are NOT on the table when we are all arguing about religion, abortion, guns, etc. Like really?
miki123211 2y ago
> that would necessitate atleast a big corporation like Nikon / Sony etc. being "in on it" to fake Or an APT (AKA advanced persistent teenager) with their parents camera and more time than they know what to do with.
teaearlgraycold 2y ago
I worked in device attestation at Android. It’s not robust enough to put our understanding of reality in. Fine for preventing API abuse but that’s it.
- dataflow 2y ago
  > I worked in device attestation at Android. It’s not robust enough to put our understanding of reality in. I don't follow. Isn't software backward compatibility a big reason why Android device attestation is so hard? For cameras, why can't the camera sensor output a digital signature of the sensor data along with the actual sensor data?
  - teaearlgraycold 2y ago
    There's been a slow march to requiring hardware-backed security. I believe all new devices from the last couple of years need a TEE or a dedicated security chip. At least with Android there are too many OEMs and they screw up too often. Bad actors will specifically seek out these devices, even if they're not very technically skilled. The skilled bad actors will 0-day the devices with the weakest security. For political reasons, even if a batch of a million devices are compromised it's hard to quickly ban them because that means those phones can no longer watch Netflix etc.
    - dataflow 2y ago
      But you don't have to ban them for this use case? You just need something opportunistic, not ironclad. An entity like Google could publish those devices' certificates as "we can't verify the integrity of these devices' cameras", and let the public deal with that information (or not) as they wish. Customers who care about proving integrity (e.g., the media) will seek the verifiable devices. Those who don't, won't. I can't tell if I'm missing something here, but this seems much more straightforward than the software attestation problem Android has been dealing with so far.
      - johnny22 2y ago
wpietri 2y ago
I think doing this right goes the other direction. What we're going to end up with is a focus on provenance. We already understand that with text. We know that to verify words, we have to trace it back to the source, and then we evaluate the credibility of the source. There have been periods where recording technology ran ahead of faking technology, so we tended to just trust photos, audio, and video (even though they could always be used to paint misleading pictures). But that era is over. New technological tricks may push back the tide a little here and there, but mostly we're going to end up relying on, "Who says this is real, and why should we believe them?"
mr_toad 2y ago
So you could never edit the video?
tivert 2y ago
> If you want to publish proof of an event, you should have some pixels on a screen along with some cryptographic signature from a device sensor that would necessitate atleast a big corporation like Nikon / Sony / etc. being "in on it" to fake. That idea doesn't work, at all. Even assuming a perfect technical implementation, all you'd have to do to defeat it is launder your fake image through a camera's image sensor. And there's even a term for doing that: telecine. With the right jig, a HiDPI display, and typical photo editing (no one shows you raw, full-res images), I don't think such a signature forgery would detectable by a layman or maybe even an expert.

by mazlix 3y ago

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

> If you want to publish proof of an event, you should have some pixels on a screen along with some cryptographic signature from a device sensor that would necessitate atleast a big corporation like Nikon / Sony / etc. being "in on it" to fake. At which point nobody could verify anything that happened with any existing camera, including all past events as of today and all future events captured with any existing camera. Then someone will publish a way to extract the key from some new camera model, both allowing anyone to forge anything by extracting a key and using it to sign whatever they want, and calling into question everything actually taken with that camera model/manufacturer. Meanwhile cheap cameras will continue to be made that don't even support RAW, and people will capture real events with them because they were in hand when the events unexpectedly happened. Which is the most important use case because footage taken by a staff photographer at a large media company with a professional camera can already be authenticated by a big corporation, specifically the large media company.

robertlagrant 2y ago
I think at minimum YouTube could tag existing footage uploaded before 2015 as very unlikely to be AI generated.
- bandrami 2y ago
  The first (acknowledged) deepfake video is from 1997
  - BeFlatXIII 2y ago
    Hence, "unlikely" instead of "guaranteed real."
miki123211 2y ago
also the three letter agencies (not just from the US) will have access to private keys of at least some manufacturers, allowing them to authenticate fake events and sow chaos by strategically leaking keys for cameras that recorded something they really don't like.
- eek2121 2y ago
  For all the folks that bash the United States for "reasons" this one gave me a chuckle. Our handling of privacy and data and such is absolute ass, but at least we *can* hide our data from big government with little repercussion in most cases (translation: you aren't actively being investigated for a crime that a judge isn't aware of) Of course that says nothing about the issues of corruption of judges in the court system, but that is a "relatively" new issues that DOES absolutely need to be addressed. (Shoot one could argue that the way certain folks are behaving right now is in itself unconstitutional and those folks should be booted) Countries all over the world (EVEN IN EUROPE WITH THE GDPR) are a lot less "gracious" with anonymous communication. The UK actually has been trying to outlaw private encryption, for a while now, as an example, but there are worse examples from certain other countries. You can find them by examining their political system, most (all? I did quit a bit of research, but also was not interested in spending a ton of time on this topic) are "conservative leaning" Note that I'm not talking just about existing policy, but countries that are continually trying to enact new policy. Just like the US has "guarantees" on free speech, the right to vote, etc. The world needs guaranteed access to freedom of speech, religion, right to vote, healthcare, food, water, shelter, electricity, and medical care. I don't know of a single country in the world, including the US, that does anywhere close to a good of job with that. I'm actually hoping that Ukraine is given both the motive and opportunity to push the boundaries in that regard. If you've been following some of the policy stuff, it is a step in the right direction. I 100% know they won't even come close to getting the job done, but they are definitely moving in the right direction. I definitely do not support this war, but with all of the death and destruction, at least there is a tiny little pinprick of light... ...Even if a single country in the world got everything right, we still need to find a way to unite everyone. Our time in this universe is limited and our time on earth more-so. We should have been working together 60 years ago for a viable off-planet colony and related stuff. If the world ended tomorrow, humanity would cease to exist. You need over 100,000 people to sustain the human race in the event a catastrophic event wipes almost everyone out. Even if we had 1,000 people in space, our species would be doomed. I am really super surprised that basic survival needs are NOT on the table when we are all arguing about religion, abortion, guns, etc. Like really?

miki123211 2y ago

> that would necessitate atleast a big corporation like Nikon / Sony etc. being "in on it" to fake Or an APT (AKA advanced persistent teenager) with their parents camera and more time than they know what to do with.

teaearlgraycold 2y ago

I worked in device attestation at Android. It’s not robust enough to put our understanding of reality in. Fine for preventing API abuse but that’s it.

dataflow 2y ago
> I worked in device attestation at Android. It’s not robust enough to put our understanding of reality in. I don't follow. Isn't software backward compatibility a big reason why Android device attestation is so hard? For cameras, why can't the camera sensor output a digital signature of the sensor data along with the actual sensor data?
- teaearlgraycold 2y ago
  There's been a slow march to requiring hardware-backed security. I believe all new devices from the last couple of years need a TEE or a dedicated security chip. At least with Android there are too many OEMs and they screw up too often. Bad actors will specifically seek out these devices, even if they're not very technically skilled. The skilled bad actors will 0-day the devices with the weakest security. For political reasons, even if a batch of a million devices are compromised it's hard to quickly ban them because that means those phones can no longer watch Netflix etc.
  - dataflow 2y ago
    But you don't have to ban them for this use case? You just need something opportunistic, not ironclad. An entity like Google could publish those devices' certificates as "we can't verify the integrity of these devices' cameras", and let the public deal with that information (or not) as they wish. Customers who care about proving integrity (e.g., the media) will seek the verifiable devices. Those who don't, won't. I can't tell if I'm missing something here, but this seems much more straightforward than the software attestation problem Android has been dealing with so far.
    - johnny22 2y ago

wpietri 2y ago

I think doing this right goes the other direction. What we're going to end up with is a focus on provenance. We already understand that with text. We know that to verify words, we have to trace it back to the source, and then we evaluate the credibility of the source. There have been periods where recording technology ran ahead of faking technology, so we tended to just trust photos, audio, and video (even though they could always be used to paint misleading pictures). But that era is over. New technological tricks may push back the tide a little here and there, but mostly we're going to end up relying on, "Who says this is real, and why should we believe them?"

mr_toad 2y ago

So you could never edit the video?

tivert 2y ago

> If you want to publish proof of an event, you should have some pixels on a screen along with some cryptographic signature from a device sensor that would necessitate atleast a big corporation like Nikon / Sony / etc. being "in on it" to fake. That idea doesn't work, at all. Even assuming a perfect technical implementation, all you'd have to do to defeat it is launder your fake image through a camera's image sensor. And there's even a term for doing that: telecine. With the right jig, a HiDPI display, and typical photo editing (no one shows you raw, full-res images), I don't think such a signature forgery would detectable by a layman or maybe even an expert.