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by padolsey·9mo ago·view on hn ↗
What concerns me most in the era of gen AI irt photography is journalism. We need truth, most especially when limited-means citizen journalism is the only reliable source of that truth.

But I feel like the only way to accomplish fool-proof photos we can trust in a trustless way (i.e. without relying on e.g. the Press Association to vet) is to utterly PACK the hardware with sensors and tamper-proof attestation so the capture can’t be plausibly faked: multi-spectral (RGB + IR + UV) imaging, depth/LiDAR, stereo cameras, PRNU fingerprinting, IMU motion data, secure GPS with attested fix, a hardware clock and secure element for signing, ambient audio, lens telemetry, environmental sensors (temperature, barometer, humidity, light spectrum) — all wrapped in cryptographic proofs that bind these readings to the pixels.

In the meantime however, I'd trust a 360deg go-pro with some kind of signature of manafacture. OR just a LOT of people taking photos in a given vicinity. Hard to fake that.

3 comments
This is probably one of those scenarios where if someone wants to fake it they're going to fake it (or at least it will be a never ending arms race, and I expect AI to keep close chase), while a basic security solution will suffice for 99% of use cases, including standard journalism. After all, skilled photoshop+computational tools can already do expert fakery in journalism. (Just look at the last Abroadinjapan video earlier today for a good callout of Photoshop editing to increase engagement).
Mine isn't journalism, it's the court system.

Before long, it might be somewhat "easy" to prove anything.