What if someone take the photo of the forged photo displayed on another device, doesn’t the forged photo become an authentic one?
Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography
11–20 of 359 posts
Re: Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography
#12Apple doesn't address the modified photo replay situation, where you take a picture of an already edited image. Photoshop / AI-gen an image -> display on a high-resolution monitor -> photograph the monitor with iPhone 18 Pro -> valid Apple Reference image. To get valid reference photos, you can go to the actual physical location, put the iPhone/monitor in a cardboard box to block external light, then photograph the m…
It also doesn't prevent you from staging an image or anything that's existed since photography was invented. But that's not the problem they're trying to solve. > Today, powerful, widely available AI tools allow users to easily generate or alter photorealistic images to a degree that was difficult to imagine just a few years ago. Photoshop has existed for decades and so has fake images. This is a low friction way to…
> "But that's not the problem they're trying to solve."
It is the problem that they say they're trying to solve, though. They specifically say "where the essential role of a photograph is to prove that something actually happened".
It fails the reasonable person test to say that the "something" in that phrase refers to the act of taking the photo itself.
Likewise in "distinguish between photographs that depict real events and...".
Re: Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Claim 7 in this patent application describes how depth sensors are used as part of an image authentication process, which would make such a workaround more difficult: https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa... The Apple Reference Image feature is here launched on iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max that both have built-in LiDAR sensors that could be used for this process.
iPhone lidar only works up to like 16 feet in the easiest lighting conditions (indoors) and may be functionally ineffective outdoors.
So you need a big enough screen to cover the entire field of view at 16 ft? Sounds expensive
Re: Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography
#14Apple doesn't address the modified photo replay situation, where you take a picture of an already edited image. Photoshop / AI-gen an image -> display on a high-resolution monitor -> photograph the monitor with iPhone 18 Pro -> valid Apple Reference image. To get valid reference photos, you can go to the actual physical location, put the iPhone/monitor in a cardboard box to block external light, then photograph the m…
Claim 7 in this patent application describes how depth sensors are used as part of an image authentication process, which would make such a workaround more difficult: https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa... The Apple Reference Image feature is here launched on iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max that both have built-in LiDAR sensors that could be used for this process.
Apple's current implementation doesn't integrate LiDAR. And LiDAR wouldn't be enough here, it's trivial to block the projector and hide the dot pattern. No dot pattern = iPhone thinks the object is far away, which is what happens in landscape photos.
A better fix is to take photos with all three iPhone cameras simultaneously, ideally as a 2-3s video, and use the parallax/multiple perspectives to extract depth information. The video files (Possibly audio too) could also be included with the verified image as additional verification.
They can also prevent photos if iPhone detects the LiDAR sensor is covered, similar to how Meta does it with their camera glasses.
Re: Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Claim 7 in this patent application describes how depth sensors are used as part of an image authentication process, which would make such a workaround more difficult: https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa... The Apple Reference Image feature is here launched on iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max that both have built-in LiDAR sensors that could be used for this process.
iPhone lidar only works up to like 16 feet in the easiest lighting conditions (indoors) and may be functionally ineffective outdoors.
Still, that means that either the fake target scene and your screen presenting it would need to be outside of LiDAR sensor bounds, or you'd need to find a way to make the depth sensor data conform with your fake scene, both increasing the difficulty of producing a forgery.
Re: Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography
#16Apple doesn't address the modified photo replay situation, where you take a picture of an already edited image. Photoshop / AI-gen an image -> display on a high-resolution monitor -> photograph the monitor with iPhone 18 Pro -> valid Apple Reference image. To get valid reference photos, you can go to the actual physical location, put the iPhone/monitor in a cardboard box to block external light, then photograph the m…
Claim 7 in this patent application describes how depth sensors are used as part of an image authentication process, which would make such a workaround more difficult: https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa... The Apple Reference Image feature is here launched on iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max that both have built-in LiDAR sensors that could be used for this process.
furthermore, couldnt you do parallax from the multiple cameras as well as flicker the flash?
seems pretty easy to make it sufficiently difficult to trick the system
Re: Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography
#17Apple doesn't address the modified photo replay situation, where you take a picture of an already edited image. Photoshop / AI-gen an image -> display on a high-resolution monitor -> photograph the monitor with iPhone 18 Pro -> valid Apple Reference image. To get valid reference photos, you can go to the actual physical location, put the iPhone/monitor in a cardboard box to block external light, then photograph the m…
Is this really that big of a flaw in this implementation? I don't think it's worth the additional complexity to address it. (Encoding depth information in some way, trying to detect "flat" surfaces, whatever).
Discerning a camera taken image of an image is typically very very easy. The collors/exposure/etc will all be obviously wrong in ways to a human, even without doing any analysis.
Re: Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Claim 7 in this patent application describes how depth sensors are used as part of an image authentication process, which would make such a workaround more difficult: https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa... The Apple Reference Image feature is here launched on iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max that both have built-in LiDAR sensors that could be used for this process.
Apple's current implementation doesn't integrate LiDAR. And LiDAR wouldn't be enough here, it's trivial to block the projector and hide the dot pattern. No dot pattern = iPhone thinks the object is far away, which is what happens in landscape photos. A better fix is to take photos with all three iPhone cameras simultaneously, ideally as a 2-3s video, and use the parallax/multiple perspectives to extract depth informa…
I don't think it's an either or - additional data signals that need to correlate to authenticate will increase confidence. You can use multiple other signals to evaluate whether something is truly a landscape photo, and in that case not require a LiDAR capture, but if you are inside and at close range then you could assume that it should be part of scoring the authentication.
Similarly, LiDAR alone will help disqualify cases where someone is just taking a picture of e.g. a landscape target of the Golden Gate, but that it shown on a screen 1 meter away.
Re: Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
iPhone lidar only works up to like 16 feet in the easiest lighting conditions (indoors) and may be functionally ineffective outdoors.
So you need a big enough screen to cover the entire field of view at 16 ft? Sounds expensive
Well, first, that's only expensive if you're poor. The world is absolutely full of people who can easily piss away your entire annual income throwing a house party.
But I really mean that if the lidar barely works outdoors anyway then actually you don't need to be 16 feet away at all.
Anyway, one may presume that they've thought about this.
Re: Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography
#20NFTs by another name...