this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
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The White House wants to 'cryptographically verify' videos of Joe Biden so viewers don't mistake them for AI deepfakes::Biden's AI advisor Ben Buchanan said a method of clearly verifying White House releases is "in the works."

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

it would potentially be associated with a law that states that you must not misrepresent a “verified” UI element like a check mark etc, and whilst they could technically add a verified mark wherever they like, the law would prevent that - at least for US companies

it may work in the same way as hardware certifications - i believe that HDMI has a certification standard that cables and devices must be manufactured to certain specifications to bear the HDMI logo, and the HDMI logo is trademarked so using it without permission is illegal… it doesn’t stop cheap knock offs, but it means if you buy things in stores in most US-aligned countries that bear the HDMI mark, they’re going to work

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

There’s already some kind of legal structure for what you’re talking about: trademark. It’s called “I’m Joe Biden and I approve this message.”

If you’re talking about HDCP you can break that with an HDMI splitter so IDK.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Relying on trademark law to combat deepfake disinformation campaigns has the same energy as "Murder is already illegal, we don't need gun control."

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

kinda… trademark law and copyright is pretty tightly controlled on the big social media platforms, and really that’s the target here

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

TLDR: trademark law yes, combined with a cryptographic signature in the video metadata… if a platform sees and verifies the signature, they are required to put the verified logo prominently around the video

i’m not talking about HDCP no. i’m talking about the certification process for HDMI, USB, etc

(random site that i know nothing about): https://www.pacroban.com/en-au/blogs/news/hdmi-certifications-what-they-mean-and-why-they-matter

you’re right; that’s trademark law. basically you’re only allowed to put the HDMI logo on products that are certified as HDMI compatible, which has specifications on the manufacturing quality of cables etc

in this case, you’d only be able to put the verified logo next to videos that are cryptographically signed in the metadata as originating from the whitehouse (or probably better, some federal election authority who signs any campaign videos as certified/legitimate: in australia we have the AEC - australian electoral commission - a federal body that runs our federal elections and investigations election issues, etc)

now this of course wouldn’t work for sites outside of US control, but it would at least slow the flow of deepfakes on facebook, instagram, tiktok, the platform formerly known as twitter… assuming they implemented it, and assuming the govt enforced it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Once an original video is cryptographically signed, could future uploads be automatically verified based on pixels plus audio? Could allow for commentary to clip the original.

Might need some kind of minimum length restriction to prevent deceptive editing which simply (but carefully) scrambles original footage.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

not really… signing is only possible on exact copies (like byte exact; not even “the same image” but the same image, formatted the same, without being resized, etc)… there are things called perceptual hashes, and ways of checking if images are similar, but cryptography wouldn’t really help there