There’s only been a short period of human history from the invention of photography to today. We had evidence before photography existed, and we will still have evidence even if photography can be trivially faked.
There’s only been a very short period of human history where video cameras were cheap enough to be used for widespread surveillance, but could not be trivially faked. That period is just about over. We had laws prior to video surveillance, and we will still have laws even if video surveillance becomes obsolete.
But it won’t. Instead, provenance, or chain-of-custody of evidence, will become even more important.
You can fake security camera footage — but if real security cameras upload their recordings automatically to a service that timestamps them and certifies them, then that metadata (and the trustworthiness of the service) represent a way of verifying that particular footage was created at a particular time, and even by a particular instrument.
Instead of Joe’s Corner Store having video cameras that record only to local storage or to Joe’s own account on a cloud service, they will instead stream to a service run by a security or insurance company, or (in some places) the police. This service will timestamp the video, record checksums, and thereby provide assurance that a particular video recording is really from Joe’s camera and not faked by AI.
Effectively, you can’t trust a mere video that appears to show Taylor Swift shoplifting from Joe’s Corner Store — but when a representative from Joe’s insurance company testifies in court that the video was definitely recorded by their device at a particular time, and has the logs and checksums to prove it, Ms. Swift will be in trouble.
In the court of public opinion… yeah we had better figure out how to quickly prove one from the other or a lot of people are going to have a very rough time
Even if it were technically possible to conclude a video is “genuine” (whatever that means) the genuine public would not trust it. As in… vaccines method of action is too complex to understand, therefore facebook memes are a more reliable source of factual information.
I’m hoping that fake video becomes so prevalent that absolutely everyone is forced to acknowledge that no video can be trusted as a source of factual information.
There’s only been a short period of human history from the invention of photography to today. We had evidence before photography existed, and we will still have evidence even if photography can be trivially faked.
There’s only been a very short period of human history where video cameras were cheap enough to be used for widespread surveillance, but could not be trivially faked. That period is just about over. We had laws prior to video surveillance, and we will still have laws even if video surveillance becomes obsolete.
But it won’t. Instead, provenance, or chain-of-custody of evidence, will become even more important.
You can fake security camera footage — but if real security cameras upload their recordings automatically to a service that timestamps them and certifies them, then that metadata (and the trustworthiness of the service) represent a way of verifying that particular footage was created at a particular time, and even by a particular instrument.
Instead of Joe’s Corner Store having video cameras that record only to local storage or to Joe’s own account on a cloud service, they will instead stream to a service run by a security or insurance company, or (in some places) the police. This service will timestamp the video, record checksums, and thereby provide assurance that a particular video recording is really from Joe’s camera and not faked by AI.
Effectively, you can’t trust a mere video that appears to show Taylor Swift shoplifting from Joe’s Corner Store — but when a representative from Joe’s insurance company testifies in court that the video was definitely recorded by their device at a particular time, and has the logs and checksums to prove it, Ms. Swift will be in trouble.
In the Court of law you are correct
In the court of public opinion… yeah we had better figure out how to quickly prove one from the other or a lot of people are going to have a very rough time
Nah.
Even if it were technically possible to conclude a video is “genuine” (whatever that means) the genuine public would not trust it. As in… vaccines method of action is too complex to understand, therefore facebook memes are a more reliable source of factual information.
I’m hoping that fake video becomes so prevalent that absolutely everyone is forced to acknowledge that no video can be trusted as a source of factual information.
This was once a fake photo that fooled many people. People figured out later that fake photos are a thing, and now only the most gullible are fooled by Bat-Boy or alien autopsy “photos”.
No need to stream the whole video externally, you could just send the checksums every X minutes and then provide the video with that checksum later.
It doesn’t entirely stop the problem though, as you could still insert faked videos into the stream. You just couldn’t do it retroactively.
Sure, but robbing a store and simultaneously hacking their video feed is harder than robbing a store and retroactively creating fake footage.
I’m not particularly worried about robbery. There are far more sophisticated ways to attack an organization or person.