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The White House wants to 'cryptographically verify' videos of Joe Biden so viewers don't mistake them for AI deepfakes
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
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It would become quite easy to dismiss anything for not being cryptographically verified simply by not cryptographically verifying.
I can see the benefit of having such verification but I also see how prone it might be to suppressing unpopular/unsanctioned journalism.
Unless the proof is very clear and easy for the public to understand the new method of denial just becomes the old method of denial.
It would be nice if none of this was necessary... but we don't live in that world. There is a lot of straight up bullshit in the news these days especially when it comes to controversial topics (like the war in Gaza, or Covid).
You could go a really long way by just giving all photographers the ability to sign their own work. If you know who took the photo, then you can make good decisions about wether to trust them or not.
Random account on a social network shares a video of a presidential candidate giving a speech? Yeah maybe don't trust that. Look for someone else who's covered the same speech instead, obviously any real speech is going to be covered by every major news network.
That doesn't stop a ordinary people from sharing presidential speeches on social networks. But it would make it much easier to identify fake content.
Once people get used to cryptographical signed videos, why only trust one source? If a news outlet is found signing a fake video, they will be in trouble. Loss of said trust if nothing else.
We should get to the point we don't trust unsigned videos.
I see you've never heard of Fox News before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_controversies#Video_footage_manipulation
Yes, and now people don't trust Fox News, to the point it is close to being banned from being used as a source for anything on Wikipedia
I don't know that 'about to be banned by Wikipedia' is a good metric for how much the general American public trusts Fox News. It could be that most of them don't, but that is not a good way to tell considering there's no general public input on what Wikipedia accepts as a source.
Also, it should have been banned by Wikipedia years ago.
Not trusting unsigned videos is one thing, but will people be judging the signature or the content itself to determine if it is fake?
Why only one source should be trusted is a salient point. If we are talking trust: it feels entirely plausible that an entity could use its trust (or power) to manufacture a signature.
And for some it is all too relevant that an entity like the White House, (or the gambit of others, past or present), have certainly presented false informstion as true to do things like invade countries.
Trust is a much more flexible concept that is willing to be bent. And so cryptographic verification really has to demonstrate how and why something is fake to the general public. Otherwise it is just a big 'trust me bro.'
Your right in that cryptographic verification only can prove someone signed the video. But that will mean nutters sharing "BBC videos", that don't have the BBC signature can basically be dismissed straight off. We are already in a soup of miss information, so sourcing being cryptographically provable is a step forward. If you trust those sources or not is another matter, but at least your know if it's the true source or not. If a source abuse trust it has, it loses trust.