In an era of scams and imitation news, so-called "deepfakes" are the latest set on on our relationship with reality.

If y'all're unfamiliar, deepfakes are videos generated with aid from artificial intelligence that prove a recognizable figure (like Barack Obama or Mark Zuckerberg, for example) maxim things that they've never actually said. By putting false words in the mouths of prominent, powerful people, deepfakes are a perceived threat purportedly true information.

Merely if in that location'southward one thing we know about blockchain, the database engineering science that props up popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, we know that information technology excels at verifying and confirming what is real. Did Alice actually send Bob $100 of crypto? That'southward an easy confirmation to make with access to an open up blockchain.

At present a 72-folio report issued by Witness Media Lab goes in depth on the tools that stand up a chance to push dorsum against the threat of deepfakes, and blockchain is 1 of them. It's non the first time this thought has been floated, but it's certainly one of the more thoughtful explanations we've seen.

The general idea goes like this: images, videos, and sound can be cryptographically signed, geotagged, and timestamped to establish their origins. This kind of "verified capture" calls for applications to perform a number of checks, ensuring that transmitted information conforms with the source textile. That media tin be assigned a cryptographic hash based on the image or sound data it contains — comparing that source hash to some other in search of any mismatches will easily tell you if the media has been manipulated or not.

In other words, blockchain can verify source media against copycats or outright manipulations the same way it verifies crypto transactions. Simply this isn't a totally bulletproof approach — it effectively calls for united states of america to put trust in a technical system without considering its limits. The report cites media forensics expert Hany Farid proverb that any finished blockchain solution for fighting deepfakes is still years away due to the complexity involved hither.

Blockchains are even so vulnerable to sophisticated attacks against their governance structures, or the notorious 51% attacks that accept caused problems for the crypto community in the past. But in that location'southward enough promise here that people are taking note. We got in bear upon with Corin Faife, senior coordinator for Witness, who offered a useful analogy:

When we buy food from a supermarket, we generally wait it to be packaged in such a style that it tin't exist tampered with — sealed plastic, stickers over the wrapper, and and then on. It doesn't guarantee the nutrient will be perfect: information technology still might not taste adept, and we can't forestall information technology from spoiling if yous leave it out too long, merely what you do know is that the packet hasn't been interfered with on its style to you.

Faife continued: "These authenticity measures propose something similar for video: it'south not an ultimate guarantee of truth and shouldn't exist taken as an endorsement of the content itself, simply information technology does permit you to ostend that a media item hasn't been tampered with on its way to y'all from the original point of capture."

At a time when deepfake engineering science seems to only be improving, it's good to know that we have tools left in our figurative toolbelt for pushing dorsum confronting them.