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Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography

security.apple.com

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Re: Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography

#21

Post by halestock »

tristanj wrote: post #14
pveierland wrote: post #7

Earlier 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…

This approach makes me wonder if the future is actually going to move towards visual cryptography.

Re: Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography

#22

Post by nomel »

gruez wrote: post #13
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #9

Earlier 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

Or, probably just some optics, like a slanted $9 IR mirror [1] in front of it, to direct the lidar to the sky/absorption box. Then you can point at the high res HDR TV that's probably already in your living room.

[1] https://commonlands.com/products/ir-cut-filters-csp650?srslt...

Re: Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography

#24

Post by nvme0n1p1 »

tristanj wrote: post #3

Apple 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…

Yeah, such systems have been tried (and been hacked) for decades now.

https://www.elcomsoft.com/news/428.html

https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2011/04/nikon-image-authenticatio...

You don't even have to travel to the location, you can just spoof GPS. And of course that will only be needed until some eastern european kid gets bored one weekend and the signing keys magically appear on pastebin.

It's funny to see Apple fall into this same trap.

Re: Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography

#25

Post by [deleted] »

tristanj wrote: post #3

Apple 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…

[deleted]

Re: Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography

#26

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

dinobones wrote: post #17
tristanj wrote: post #3

Apple 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.

You mean that it is sometimes very easy. But it is also sometimes impossible. You seem to be thinking only of poor quality photos of poor quality prints, but there's no basis for assuming those characteristics.

Re: Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography

#27

Post by brookst »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #19
gruez wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thought about it and also are bright enough not to fall for the “if a single person dies wearing a seat belt, we should abandon seat belts because they do no good at all” fallacy.

It’s almost certainly possible to fool v1 of this system, for some images, in some contexts. It would be shocking if the first implementation was completely perfect. But maybe it’s better than nothing?

Re: Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography

#28

Post by spiderice »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #12
osy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

This is so stupid. This makes it like, a thousand times harder to fake a photo than it would otherwise be. You pedants imagining a way to fake it doesn't change that.

Re: Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography

#29

Post by brookst »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #12
osy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

So, in your view, photography has been fatally flawed since the late 1800’s, and mere mitigation of AI image gen are insufficient if they don’t also solve actors impersonating real people?

Re: Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography

#30

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

brookst wrote: post #27
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thought about it and also are bright enough not to fall for the “if a single person dies wearing a seat belt, we should abandon seat belts because they do no good at all” fallacy. It’s almost certainly possible to fool v1 of this system, for some images, in some contexts. It would be shocking if the first implementation was completely perfect. But maybe it’s better than nothing?

> But maybe it’s better than nothing?

I think this will depend on how it gets used. I can imagine numerous outcomes where it's in fact worse than nothing (significantly more effective blackmail, for instance).

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