Camera giants Sony, Nikon and Canon are joining forces to combat deepfakes by embedding digital signatures on photos taken by their cameras.
According to Nikkei Asia, these signatures are resistant to forgery and will contain data such as date, time, location and photographer. The three have aligned themselves with a global standard for these signatures.
This feature will be available in their mirrorless cameras, which capture mirrorless images within the camera body. Smartphone cameras are also mirrorless.
Nikkei Asia also reports that camera makers have partnered with global media outlets to create a web tool to check these digital watermarks.
Dubbed Verify, users upload an image and can get information about when it was taken as well as where and who took it. Then check if an image has been doctored or AI-generated.
The Associated Press and Reuters reportedly field tested the camera manufacturer’s authentication tools. The camera giants are also developing respective solutions. Sony and Canon are considering incorporating digital signatures into videos.
Detecting deepfakes and AI-generated images is becoming a major goal for many in the AI field. Viral examples like the Pope in a down jacket or the fake explosion near the Pentagon have shown that social media users can be deceived.
The alliance comes as 2024 marks the start of a year marked by many key elections around the world, including the US presidential election.
Other efforts to combat deepfakes include that of Meta Stable signaturea method for embedding watermarks in AI-generated images, invisible to the human eye. Google DeepMind created Synthesizer ID which works for pictures as well as audio while MIT scientists developed PhotoGuard.
