China has released a set of guidelines on labeling internet content that is generated or composed by artificial intelligence (AI) technology, which are set to take effect on Sept. 1.
China has released a set of guidelines on labeling internet content that is generated or composed by artificial intelligence (AI) technology, which are set to take effect on Sept. 1.
Would it be more effective to have something where cameras digitally sign the photos? Then, it also makes photos more attributable, which sounds like China’s thing.
Sort of. A camera with internet connectivity could automatically “notarize” photos. The signing authority would vouch that the photo (or other file) hasn’t been altered since the moment of signing. It wouldn’t be evidence that the photo was not manipulated before that moment.
That could make, EG, photos of a traffic accident good evidence in court. If there wasn’t time to for manipulation, then the photos must be real. It wouldn’t work for photos that could have been taken at any time.
You could upload a hash to the blockchain of a cryptocurrency for the same purpose. The integrity of the cryptocurrency would then vouch that the photo was unaltered since the upload. But that’s not cost-effective. You could even upload the hash to Reddit, since it’s not believable that they would manipulate timestamps to help some random guy somewhere in the world commit fraud.
This is the one area where blockchain could have been useful instead of greater-fool money schemes. A system where people can verify provenance of images or videos pertaining to matters of importance such as news stories. All reputable journalism already attributes their photos anyways. Cryptographic signing is just taking it to a logical conclusion. But of course the scary word ‘china’ is involved here therefore we must only contrarian post.
No, I don’t want my photos digitally signed and tracked, and I’m sure no whistleblower wants that either.
Of course not. Why would they? I don’t want that either. But we are considering the actions of an authoritarian system.
Individual privacy isn’t relevant in such a country. However, it’s an interesting choice that they implement it this way.
Apart from the privacy issues, I guess the challenge would be how you preserve the signature through ordinary editing. You could embed the unedited, signed photo into the edited one, but you’d need new formats and it would make the files huge. Or maybe you could deposit the original to some public and unalterable storage using something like a blockchain, but it would bring large storage and processing requirements. Or you could have the editing software apply a digital signature to track the provenance of an edit, but then anyone could make a signed edit and it wouldn’t prove anything about the veracity of the photo’s content.
Hm, that’s true there’s no way to distinguish between editing software and photos that have been completely generated. It only helps if you want to preserve unmodified photos. And of course, I’m making assumptions here that China doesn’t care very much about privacy.
That’s actually already a thing: https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/15/sony_launches_forgeryproof_incamera_digital/
Cool! Didn’t know it has been used.