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Email immutability matters more in a world with AI

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Re: Email immutability matters more in a world with AI

#71

"An email is your copy, and the sender can’t revise it later." Sort of. They can't change plain text, but modern emails often include vast swaths of remote content. When you open the message, it retrieves the relevant assets directly from whoever sent the email. That remote content is not permanently stored . It's cached for a bit and will not be re-used if the email is opened months or years later. If those assets d…

Gmail keeps editing mails. They have a concept of "dynamic emails" people can send now. Like if you get a mail notification about something in Docs, they will keep updating the mail in your inbox together with modified / added comments in the document. Absolutely bonkers. "Because of the dynamic nature of AMP messages, the content displayed in Gmail messages can change as time passes." https://support.google.com/a/an…

Jesus, I had no idea :-(

Re: Email immutability matters more in a world with AI

#72
post #65
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the time the video reaches the end user (i.e. on tiktok and the likes), it will have been re-compressed, edited, meme-ed, voiced over a dozen time. So not sure how you preserve trust in that chain.

You don't, the only reliable source will be the source that has signed the content. It basically takes us back to the times when the only footage available was curated and broadcast by TV.

Yeah, but I don't think Reuters, AP or AFP are anywhere near the top 1000 most popular accounts on tiktok. So they can sign anything they want, won't affect the average tiktok user.

Re: Email immutability matters more in a world with AI

#73
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a myth. I self-host email and don't have deliverability issues. What matters is domain age, IP, and compliance with DKIM/DMARC.

Prove it.

What is there to prove? You can register your own domain (avoid exotic TLDs), wait a few months to build trust, and use an email setup script like Luke Smith's to set up Postfix/Dovecot.

Before you start sending email, use mail-tester.com to check that DKIM is correctly set up and that your IP is not blacklisted.

Re: Email immutability matters more in a world with AI

#74
post #60
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a myth. I self-host email and don't have deliverability issues. What matters is domain age, IP, and compliance with DKIM/DMARC.

Is it? Last time I tried to self-host my email I did. I had DKIM, DMARC and SPF set up correctly as verified by multiple sites, but I couldnt't get reliable delivery to any Microsoft-hopsted mailboxes. Every other provider I tested was perfectly happy with my mail, unfortunately MS is too big a provider to ignore them. > What matters is domain age, IP, and compliance with DKIM/DMARC. Maybe it was my IP, but I cycled…

Use an email warming service or warm it yourself

Re: Email immutability matters more in a world with AI

#75

The immutability of documentation tech matters more in a world with AI. The cameras used to document "news" will need to be watermarked, fingerprinted and authenticated, like what Canon and Nikon are already doing (and which AFP has already adopted). It may have seemed gimmicky at first, but in a year or two, you'll probably only be able to trust visuals from companies that do this (wire agencies like AFP, AP and Reu…

I don't think this would accomplish anything. For one thing, quite a bit of misinformation these days comes from official government sources that can just compel the manufacturers to turn over authentic signing keys. Remember that Trump just posted an AI-generated video of himself shilling medbeds; when it was pointed out as AI-generated, he deleted it. If Truth Social checked the cryptographic signature, he'd order his staff to sign it. They wouldn't dare say no.

The next flaw is that cameras are happy to record screens playing AI-generated videos and mark them as authentic. Perhaps you can tell today because the screen pixels aren't perfectly 1:1 mapped to the image sensor pixels, but as soon as elections depend on being able to do that, those screens will exist.

People are saying to add LIDAR to prevent this "record the screen" hack, but a mirror over the LIDAR sensor and me sitting at a desk motionless looks to LIDAR exactly like the world leader I'm deepfaking sitting motionless at a desk. People are not using AI to generate amazing action shots.

At the end of the day, people will have to take some personal responsibility. Migrants probably aren't killing and eating pets. Pets taste terrible and grocery stores that you can just walk into and steal whatever you want exist. There isn't a bed that can cure any disease. If someone says they do, even a world leader, test them out on something non-critical. Break off a fingernail and see if the magic bed can regrow it overnight. If not, maybe stick to traditional cancer treatments until there is some clearer evidence.

Re: Email immutability matters more in a world with AI

#76

The immutability of documentation tech matters more in a world with AI. The cameras used to document "news" will need to be watermarked, fingerprinted and authenticated, like what Canon and Nikon are already doing (and which AFP has already adopted). It may have seemed gimmicky at first, but in a year or two, you'll probably only be able to trust visuals from companies that do this (wire agencies like AFP, AP and Reu…

The problem with this approach is that it is easily bypassed. Simply point your camera at a high quality monitor playing an AI generated video, and there you go, and authenticated AI video. In the future, video evidence is going to be as convincing as it was for 99.9999...% of human history. We survived with out it in the past. We'll survive without it in the future.

Re: Email immutability matters more in a world with AI

#77
Until retired as a professor, I used Thunderbird and the GPG plug-in to sign emails. That makes them immutable no matter who hosts the email server you use. I encrypted the emails holding grades, if the recipient said they were able to decrypt. Setup was non-trivial but very doable. I also used (and still use) a plug-in that clearly shows if any email fails DKIM or SPF (I think DMarc too).

Re: Email immutability matters more in a world with AI

#78
post #2

> The world is changing, and we need to adapt and understand it. fastmail: read my lips: I pay you because you offer a traditional email service if you add a single AI feature I will return to self hosting

Seriously, I just need a no BS email, if I see a single bubble with some assistance im bailing out immediately.

Re: Email immutability matters more in a world with AI

#80

The immutability of documentation tech matters more in a world with AI. The cameras used to document "news" will need to be watermarked, fingerprinted and authenticated, like what Canon and Nikon are already doing (and which AFP has already adopted). It may have seemed gimmicky at first, but in a year or two, you'll probably only be able to trust visuals from companies that do this (wire agencies like AFP, AP and Reu…

The problem with this approach is that it is easily bypassed. Simply point your camera at a high quality monitor playing an AI generated video, and there you go, and authenticated AI video. In the future, video evidence is going to be as convincing as it was for 99.9999...% of human history. We survived with out it in the past. We'll survive without it in the future.

What does it mean for the court system though, what happens to video and image evidence?
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