In the era of deepfakes, trust what you see: How Truepic verifies photos and videos
What is Truepic?
A digital inspection platform called Truepic Vision offers a rapid and easy method of sending certified, reliable photos and videos straight to the person making the request.
Leading the effort to ensure that people are aware of the source of what they are viewing on the internet is Truepic.
The prevalence of artificial intelligence (AI)-generated bogus information was brought home in March 2023 when pictures of Pope Francis walking outside the Vatican wearing a stylish designer puffer jacket went viral online. You would think the image of the pontiff, complete with a gaudy crucifix, was real unless you looked closely at it.
The pictures became viral at the same time as generative AI gained enormous popularity. Since then, increasingly advanced and easily available programs have been developed to produce realistic images and films using basic cues. It also means that whatever you see online is tougher to believe.
Here’s where Truepic can help. The company has spearheaded the development of a system that uses metadata to confirm the authenticity of photos and videos. It is collaborating with a wide range of partners, including software content producers like Adobe, social network giants like Meta, and tech giants like Microsoft and Google.
Because online misinformation and disinformation are still a concern, this has given content producers, publishers, and social media platforms a better understanding of what is real and what is phony.
Introducing Truepic
Realizing that there would soon be a need for transparency and authenticity in a future where bogus content may damage everything from online dating to commerce and sabotage elections globally, Truepic was founded in 2016.
It spent years refining and developing its product while testing a variety of methods for content authentication at the point of origin. The New York Times, Adobe, Twitter, Microsoft, and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) all supported various efforts that started to take shape around the same period.
A non-profit group named the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA.org) served as the standard’s steward, and Truepic collaborated with numerous of these businesses to develop and define the C2PA standard. Among the steering committee members who now serve as the group’s leaders are Amazon, Adobe, the BBC, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Publicis Groupe, Sony, and Truepic.
Cryptographic hashing and digital signatures, which are incorporated into a picture or video at the time of creation, are the foundation of the C2PA standard. Data like the equipment or program used to capture the media, when it was taken, and whether editing software was used are all included in the metadata. After that, a different C2PA-enabled device can unlock and examine the data to confirm the authenticity of the picture.
It is crucial that Truepic collaborates with so many athletes who uphold the standard because of this.
Truepic Vision
Truepic provides an enterprise-grade version of C2PA, which is an open specification with extra security, dependability, and support. Additionally, it provides Truepic Vision, a stand-alone software as a service that enables businesses to request, take, and examine reliable digital images and videos in place of time-consuming and expensive on-site inspections.
A few years later, the demand for a business like Truepic has increased because to the intricacy and caliber of content produced by AI.
Qualcomm Technologies reached out to Truepic in order to work together on a proof of concept that would ultimately lead to an authentication solution for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform, integrating with Snapdragon for on-device authentication. In order to provide vault-like protection for a device’s critical data, engineers from both sides worked every day to improve Truepic’s services directly for usage with Qualcomm Technologies’ Trusted Execution Environment in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform.
The C2PA signing is handled by Qualcomm Technologies’ Trusted Execution Environment, which further strengthens the security of the authentication process by making it more difficult for malicious actors to alter the cryptographic keys that safeguard the data.
What comes next?
The U.S. presidential election, which has already seen its fair share of AI-content muddy the field, serves as the best example of the applicability of Truepic’s services. Along with TikTok, Meta, Google, OpenAI, and other firms, it was one of 20 to join the AI Elections Accord in February 2024, pledging to fight false AI election material.
Because they may lack the time or resources to deal with picture and other internet content verification themselves, businesses are increasingly turning to C2PA and Truepic.
Additionally, more businesses are eager to join as they can see the direction that AI safety rules are taking. C2PA is viewed by many as a means of complying with upcoming regulations.
The goal of Truepic is to integrate its technology into the upcoming flagship phones that use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 architecture. According to McGregor, this will enable Truepic to expand the technology to a new level.
