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Signs that can reveal a fake photo (2017)

bbc.com

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Re: Signs that can reveal a fake photo (2017)

#41

Post by sluggosaurus »

tinus_hn wrote: post #40

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1434581638923620360?... These days you don’t even need to fake the photo, you can just attach the fake drama to a photo of something else and no one will bat an eyelid.

All the mainstream reputable news organizations use stock photography extensively, so the public is generally willing to accept that the photograph attached to the headline needn't have anything to do with that headline.

Personally, I think this practice should be ended or at least decreased greatly. An article about a ship doesn't a stock photograph of a ship. It probably doesn't even need a photograph about the particular ship the article is discussing, unless there is something visually unusual or notable about that ship. The formula "Ship A is late to port, here is a stock photo of Ship B" is basically worthless. I guess they're tossing a bone to the borderline illiterate who are stuck at the "I can read picture books" level of literacy? But generally articles themselves are written at a higher 'reading level' than that.

Re: Signs that can reveal a fake photo (2017)

#42

Post by Wistar »

tinus_hn wrote: post #40

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1434581638923620360?... These days you don’t even need to fake the photo, you can just attach the fake drama to a photo of something else and no one will bat an eyelid.

Snopes often refers to these as "miscaptioned."

Re: Signs that can reveal a fake photo (2017)

#43

Post by chasil »

someguyorother wrote: post #35
hdm41bc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I thought that the blockchain would be employed is to use it to track transformations of the image. Post-processing, adding captions, and what not. This would provide an audit trail of changes to the original source image. If, in fact, we can’t reliably sign the source image as authentic, then the rest of the system falls apart. It seems like this is the crux of the problem.

That seems to be a DRM problem. Let's say that you want the camera to track all modifications of the picture. Then, analogous to DRM, there's nothing stopping the forger from just replacing the CCD array on the camera with a wire connected to a computer running GIMP. To patch the "digital hole", it would be necessary to make the camera tamperproof, or force GIMP to run under a trusted enclave that won't do transforma…

If a signed sha256 is somehow attached in the exif data, it can be removed.

What digital rights are there to manage? This would be a statement of authenticity, not proliferation control.

The vendor's private key would have to be stored in the device. How could it be protected from extraction?

Re: Signs that can reveal a fake photo (2017)

#44

Post by open-source-ux »

There are also misleading photos - not fake images but a more subtle attempt to manipulate viewers.

A mundane example: You're browsing a property website, look through the pictures, and then visit a property only to discover the rooms are tiny matchbox-sized spaces. They looked so much more spacious when you viewed them online. You're just discovered wide-lens-photography for real estate - purposely distorts or make a space look spacious.

A 'fake' news example: During the coronavirus lockdown, a Danish photo agency, Ritzau Scanpix, commisioned two photographers to use two different perspectives to shoot scenes of people in socially-distance scenarios. Were people observing the rules? Or did the type of lens (wide-angle and telephoto) intentionally give a misleadling impression?

The pictures are here - the article is in Danish, but the photos tell the story:

https://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2020-04-26-hvor-taet-er-folk-...

Re: Signs that can reveal a fake photo (2017)

#45

Post by lupire »

z5h wrote: post #28

I tried to prove that crops which do not preserve photographic centre are detectable https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/367981/3194 This was after photographers seemed to not believe this was the case https://photo.stackexchange.com/q/86550/45128 In any case, detecting cropped photos could be a way to detect that something has been intentionally omitted after the fact.

cropping is 0.01% of what makes a misleading photo misleading. And content-aware fill can uncrop.

Re: Signs that can reveal a fake photo (2017)

#46

Post by 1cvmask »

Wistar wrote: post #42
tinus_hn wrote: post #40

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1434581638923620360?... These days you don’t even need to fake the photo, you can just attach the fake drama to a photo of something else and no one will bat an eyelid.

Snopes often refers to these as "miscaptioned."

Unfortunately Snopes miscaptions many things themselves. Where the fact checkers of the "fact checkers".

Re: Signs that can reveal a fake photo (2017)

#47

Post by 1cvmask »

tinus_hn wrote: post #40

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1434581638923620360?... These days you don’t even need to fake the photo, you can just attach the fake drama to a photo of something else and no one will bat an eyelid.

Rolling Stone didn't even produce a proper retraction (calling it an update) for their fake news piece from that picture caption on horse dewormer and hospitals being allegedly overwhelmed.

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1434854957614780424

Re: Signs that can reveal a fake photo (2017)

#49

Post by wussboy »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #8

I remember this, when it was first published. Good article. One thing about fakes, is that they don't need to be super-high-quality, in many cases. They just need to be enough to reinforce a narrative to a receptive audience. An example is that Kerry/Fonda fake. Just looking at it as a thumbnail on my phone, it was easy to see that it was a composite. Also, I have seen both photos, in their original contexts. They ar…

I used to think that the internet would be the greatest tool for human peace ever invented. But I was wrong. I didn’t know that humans don’t use reason to determine their position. The use it to justify their position and Google provides the greatest tool ever built for allowing people to do exactly that.

Re: Signs that can reveal a fake photo (2017)

#50

Post by wussboy »

hdm41bc wrote: post #14

Is this a solvable problem by requiring camera manufacturers cryptographically sign photos and videos created on those devices? If that’s in place then it seems like it could be the basis for chain of custody of journalistic images backed by a blockchain. This seems like the only viable solution to me since any AI powered solution would just be a cat and mouse game.

It is solvable by punishing anyone who posts fake pictures. Since the problem of bad actors in society has existed for millennia, we anyway know a dozen ways to deal with it. We just haven’t really bothered to apply any of them to the Internet.

Why we haven’t done that is a different but equally fascinating question.

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