Your smartphone would soon be able to identify deepfakes even before they are made

Deepfakes are one of most critical problems being faced by the digital world. They not only spread mistrust but they also help in expanding the outreach of fake news. But now, a new company has devised an ingenious method that can be used for identifying deepfakes right at the beginning, that is, when an individual is capturing images and videos for the same.

Enter: Truepic.

Truepic has developed a technology that is embedded in a smartphone. This technology generates a digital signature of and crytographically-sealed" provenance information of the images and videos captured using the phone. This technology authenticates information such as 3D depth map, date and time, geolocation, time the image/video was captured and the time it was edited to determine if the image has been manipulated.

The company has partnered with Qualcomm and it has embedded its technology called Truepic Foresight technology in the company’s Snapdragon 865 5G Mobile Platform and it takes advantage of the chipset’s underlying hardware security.

The company says that its technology leverages the cutting-edge hardware security features of Snapdragon 865, including the secure hardware pipeline of the Qualcomm Spectra camera 480 Image Signal Processor (ISP), which is resistant to image data and operational control tampering.

The company’s technology provides a new "Secure" capture mode in the device's native camera app. Engaging this mode and pressing the capture button produces a digital photo that contains cryptographically-sealed provenance data, formatted in accordance with emerging open standards. The data allows a recipient to authenticate the pixels, date and time, geolocation, and 3D depth map that were securely-acquired and sealed into the file at the time of capture.

“This development paves the way for visual content consumers to determine the trustworthiness of photos and accurately discern authentic versus forged content," said Manvinder Singh, Vice President, Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies said on the occasion.

Notably, neither Truepic nor Qualcomm have revealed what all Snapdragon 865-powered smartphones will get this technology and whether or not it will be available on smartphones powered by other Qualcomm processors. Ultimately, it will boil down on the smartphone makers if they want to use this technology on their smartphones.