Leica camera has built-in defense against misleading AI, costs $9,125 • Hacker News Board

Re: Leica camera has built-in defense against misleading AI, costs $9,125

#11

Post by MarkusWandel » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 4:52 PM UTC

MarkusWandel wrote: post #10

"Whenever someone subsequently edits that photo, the changes are recorded to an updated manifest, rebundled with the image, and updated in the Content Credentials database whenever it is reshared on social media. Users who find these images online can click on the CR icon in the [pictures'] corner to pull up all of this historical manifest information as well, providing a clear chain of providence, presumably, all th…

Of course metadata stripping protects people's privacy, since so many photos are geotagged these days. But still frustrating.

Re: Leica camera has built-in defense against misleading AI, costs $9,125

#12

Post by generj » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 4:54 PM UTC

traverseda wrote: post #5

You can probably build a rig to feed false data to the sensor, or take a photo of a sufficiently high-resolution display, or use side-channel power analysis to extract the cryptographic keys. I have serious doubts this kind of provenance metadata will actually work against a sophisticated attacker (someone willing to spend more than 100k on making fake images), but I'm sure it will be used as an excuse to further loc…

There are probably many possible methods to detect a picture being of a display rather than the real world. The easiest clues are depth of field and focal length metadata mismatching (presumably a macro lens or similar would be needed, and also presuming lens metadata is not spoofable and included in the signed metadata). Color accuracy will be subtly off. Cameras can detect more dynamic range depth than most (any) screens can create particularly for outdoor scenes. That’s just what I can come up with right now - scientists will have a field day publishing techniques to detect pictures of screens.

Inserting fake sensor readings is plausible but complicated enough I doubt any but state actors would or could bother.

Even this standard only raises the cost to create fake images to 100K would be fantastic for journalism and democracy. Much better than the cost being $0.

Re: Leica camera has built-in defense against misleading AI, costs $9,125

#13

Post by hooverd » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 4:56 PM UTC

bberenberg wrote: post #2

Not sure how this kind of thing works given that metadata can be stripped. Would love if the article further explained that side of things.

It's like a signed message. The image is the clear text. The point is verifying authenticity.

Re: Leica camera has built-in defense against misleading AI, costs $9,125

#14

Post by hooverd » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

Huh, there has to be a better way to do this than with a proprietary SaaS service.

Re: Leica camera has built-in defense against misleading AI, costs $9,125

#15

Post by wenc » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 5:03 PM UTC

One issue is because there are so few CR cameras out there, most people would sign their photos in Lightroom. So the provenance starts from software rather than capture device.

So you can sign a fake photo that you modified and its provenance from that point on is traceable. But you still wouldn’t know if the photo was captured authentically.

I guess it doesn’t matter — this is about traceability rather than authenticity.

Re: Leica camera has built-in defense against misleading AI, costs $9,125

#16

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 5:12 PM UTC

MarkusWandel wrote: post #10

"Whenever someone subsequently edits that photo, the changes are recorded to an updated manifest, rebundled with the image, and updated in the Content Credentials database whenever it is reshared on social media. Users who find these images online can click on the CR icon in the [pictures'] corner to pull up all of this historical manifest information as well, providing a clear chain of providence, presumably, all th…

[deleted]

Re: Leica camera has built-in defense against misleading AI, costs $9,125

#17

Post by mhitza » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 5:53 PM UTC

hooverd wrote: post #14

Huh, there has to be a better way to do this than with a proprietary SaaS service.

Of course, allowing consumers to push their custom certs to the chip, without "rooting", instead of having central control.

Re: Leica camera has built-in defense against misleading AI, costs $9,125

#18

Post by FireBeyond » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 6:00 PM UTC

Content Credentials is just one/the latest standard.

Canon (maybe others) offered a similar feature from the very early days of digital, with a module for the 1Dx at least that would cryptographically sign files the camera generated to say "this is what the sensor saw". Typically it was marketed to law enforcement, because there was a wariness around digital photography as evidence even in the early days.

Re: Leica camera has built-in defense against misleading AI, costs $9,125

#19

Post by onetimeuse92304 » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 8:15 PM UTC

There is one hitch. What if AI-generated content is projected through camera lens? That is pretty simple to do.

Re: Leica camera has built-in defense against misleading AI, costs $9,125

#20

Post by __loam » Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 8:41 PM UTC

chrisa wrote: post #6

Worth noting that the expensive price isn't because of the metadata feature - it's a new version of the Leica M11 which is $8995 itself (Leicas are just crazy expensive)

Yeah this isn't something to get outraged over. The arguably "entry level" leica is over $6k. They're expensive but well made cameras that are hand built in Germany. If you're buying one you probably know what you're getting or you have more money than you know what to do with. If you think they're expensive, there's awesome options from fujifilm, Canon, nikon, and Sony that cost less.