Back in the early 2000's Nikon had a physical 'bolt-on' system attached to a camera that authenticated an image taken by a DSLR by adding a digital watermark at time of capture. The purpose of this was for images taken at crime scenes could then be proven to be unaltered by photoshop, thus allowing the image to be used as 'real evidence' in a court of law.
Fast forward to 2023 and people are still concerned about authenticity of photos, fake news and the rise of AI images. Sure, we can shoot RAW and add our metadata, and this is a good way to recognise ownership of the images – but the general public doesn't dive into metadata, nor actually know that it even exists.
This week, Thomas Reuters (a global content and tech company known for it's news services Reuters), Starling Lab (an academic research lab based at Stanford and USC that specialises in cryptographic methods and decentralized web protocols) and Canon have joined forces to create an authentication system to securely capture, store and verify photographs.
So how does the new system work?
Canon's news release states that: "The pilot project saw Reuters photojournalist Violeta Santos Moura capture pictures using a prototype Canon camera that digitally assigns each photograph and its corresponding time, date and location with a unique identifier (hash value) and then cryptographically signs them to establish a root of trust for their authenticity. The photos are then registered into a public blockchain and updated after each modification by the Reuters pictures desk. This process continues until the photo is distributed with its metadata, edit history and blockchain registration embedded in the photograph using the new C2PA standard. To verify the picture’s authenticity, news customers can compare its unique identifier (hash value) on the public ledger."
Is this going to lead to a new era of 'real photos' where we can see a politician or celebrities un-retouched images with all their flaws? Most of the time, it is pretty easy to use common logic to debunk whether a photo is real or not and it's hard to recall a photo which was so fake and 'so important' that it has swayed public opinion in any real way (I don't count the moon landing images as fake)
However, people's concerns should be waylaid by this new system to some extent.
This being said, Nikon did come up with a system in 2011 that would assign an encrypted key to a propriety Image Authentication System. But someone found a way to crack this system.
You can read more about debunking fake images here.