Tech Japanese camera manufacturers to fight AI fakes

Nikon, Sony Group and Canon are developing camera technology that embeds digital signatures in images so that they can be distinguished from increasingly sophisticated fakes. Nikon will provide mirrorless cameras with authentication technology to help photojournalists and other professionals verify their pictures. The digital signatures will be secure and contain information such as date, time, location and photographer.

This is important because fake images are becoming more realistic and challenging the trust of content creators and consumers. This year, deepfakes of former U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida became popular online. A coalition of global news organizations, technology companies and camera makers has launched a web-based tool called Verify. It allows users to check images for free. The tool shows the date, location, and other details if an image has a digital signature. The digital signatures follow a familiar standard Nikon, Sony and Canon use. These Japanese companies dominate about 90% of the global camera market.

Sony will release in the spring of 2024 technology to incorporate digital signatures into three professional-grade mirrorless SLR cameras via a firmware update. The company is considering making the technology compatible with videos as well. When a photographer sends images to a news organization, Sony's authentication servers detect digital signatures and determine whether they are AI-generated. Sony and The Associated Press field-tested this tool In October. Sony will expand its lineup of compatible camera models and lobby other media outlets to adopt the technology. Canon will release a camera with similar features as early as 2024. The company is also developing technology that adds digital signatures to video. Canon put together a project team in 2019 and has formed a development tie-up with Thomson Reuters and the Starling Lab for Data Integrity, an institute co-founded by Stanford University and the University of Southern California. In addition, Canon is releasing an image management app to tell whether images are taken by humans.

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