Content Authenticity Initiative

Think you're good at spotting AI-generated voices? Try the quiz below, which suggests your accuracy is likely not much better than a coin toss. A study by Sarah Barrington and Hany Farid tested 50 participants who each listened to 40 short voice recordings, half real, half AI-generated. The average accuracy was only 65%. This initial sample size is small and the voice clips that participants heard were short (between 3 and 10 seconds), but it nonetheless supports my position that emphasising human detection of synthetic media is the wrong approach. Advances in AI-generated voice have been dizzying in the last two years, arguably the most dramatic across all modes of synthetic media. Just a few years ago, Google's TacoTron 2 was the leading accessible voice cloning tool but was far from generating highly convincing outputs. Today, there's no shortage of startups and open source projects pushing forward the frontier, realistically synthesising the sound of a person's voice, but also how they speak naturally and fluidly. There are still subtleties and limitations, but don't forget these are still early days. Media literacy is often brought up in response to the challenges of deepfakes and synthetic media. Awareness is important, but we can't (in good faith) say "Here's how you can spot AI-generated content reliably" without giving false confidence over time. There may be some tells today, but the direction of travel is clear. Voice synthesis is, as Hany says, "passing through the uncanny valley". We need to recentre our discussion of 'detecting deepfakes' and responsibility for doing so away from the individual. Automated detection & AI classifiers have a role to play, but media provenance approaches such as Content Authenticity Initiative and Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA)'s Content Credentials enable trust and transparency to be 'baked in' from the bottom-up. Voice synthesis leaders such as ElevenLabs, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Respeecher have all joined CAI which is promising. The next step is widespread adoption. https://lnkd.in/e_D-cBRY #ai #deepfakes #generativeAI #syntheticmedia

💿 Did you carefully curate playlists, burn the music to CDs ... then decorate it with a Sharpie? This nostalgic pastime is still a thing. When singer and songwriter Ella Janes finishes recording a new music track, she burns the audio file to a CD, prints a copy of the lyrics, and mails both items to herself in a package. She doesn’t do this to fill time, but to ensure her work can be traced back to her. I had the opportunity to speak with Wrapt co-founders Mark Janes and Stuart Waite about the hurdles that artists and creatives have to overcome to ensure their work can be verified as their own. With Content Credentials, Wrapt helps ensure digital assets (photo, video, audio) are securely tracked, shared, and published across the internet. See how it works and join their beta! https://lnkd.in/eQqE5tK6

Thanks to the Content Authenticity Initiative for covering what we're doing at Wrapt. We're so excited to launch our Wrapt Beta Program and to deliver on our mission to help #creatives protect and insure their work. You can sign up here. https://lnkd.in/gu6_YGyF Coleen Jose Andy Parsons Andrew Jenks Exit Velocity

✨NEW | Read our community story featuring Wrapt, a creative-first platform using the open C2PA Content Credentials standard to establish and maintain the provenance and authenticity of images, audio, and video. Digital theft is a widespread issue, with visits to piracy websites up 12% since 2019 (about 386 million visits per day) and an estimated cost to the US economy of $29 billion in lost revenue each year. “In an era of deepfakes, content theft, and plagiarism, Wrapt provides an industry solution to millions of content creators, brands, and publishers seeking to protect and insure their creative assets. It's as simple as wrap it, share it, track it!” - Stuart Waite, co-founder, Wrapt 🟡 See how it works and join Wrapt beta https://lnkd.in/erMNBbsg 🟡 Join the movement https://lnkd.in/gXkGtZ3s #contentcredentials #c2pa

🔊 Can you distinguish between a natural human voice and one that has been created using artificial intelligence? Test your skills and learn more with Hany Farid, UC Berkeley Professor, CAI advisor, as he explores AI-generated voices and where they are in their journey from the creepy, robot-like voices of a few years ago to today’s more realistic outputs.

In support of content provenance, election integrity, and the fight against political mis/disinformation, Campaign Verify has joined the Adobe-led Content Authenticity Initiative.

We’re proud to welcome Nikkei as a member of the Content Authenticity Initiative! The renowned publisher is among the world’s largest media companies, with 37 foreign editorial bureaus and properties, including the Financial Times. “The flood of fake images and videos misusing generative AI poses a major threat to the media, making it a matter of urgency to take measures to maintain the credibility of news reports. By participating in the CAI, Nikkei Inc. will continue to enhance the transparency of the photos and videos it publishes and pursue news coverage that is trusted by readers.” — Nikkei Inc., https://lnkd.in/e7HaZEFG 🟡 Join us https://lnkd.in/gXkGtZ3s

Did a UK political party register a fake AI-generated candidate in last week's election? On Monday, claims spread that UK Reform party candidate Mark Matlock may not exist, based on suspicion that his profile image was AI-generated. His minimal digital footprint and absence from the in-person results only further raised suspicions. However, Matlock soon appeared on TV to show he was in fact, very real. He claimed the suspicious image had been heavily edited/airbrushed, apparently to change the colour of his tie, but also included significant editing of the facial region. As I mentioned to journalists, the image's hyper-smoothed/plasticky quality reflects many extreme face-filtering apps that are particularly popular in East Asia. These apps often obliterate fine facial details and create a hyper-smoothed look. I unwittingly found myself on the receiving end of these filters when a conference producer decided my standard headshot needed a little extra 'touching up' for their promotional materials. The image below has become a meme amongst my friends and I think resembles what I'd look like as a cheap action figure... The case echoes elements of the Royal Family's Kate Middleton photo fiasco earlier this year, but also sparks some further reflections: 🔎 Some of the suspicion wasn't completely unreasonable. Diffusion-based image generators often create images with a similar 'sheen' or unrealistically smooth appearance. Matlock's left ear, hair and the shape of his pupils also appear warped or at least unusual- a common issue with some upscaling apps/filters. 🔎 There's no clear understanding of what "AI generated" actually means. Certain image 'filters' or AI apps like Lensa are transformative and technically generate entirely new synthetic images, but are based on original images of real individuals. Depending on what tools were used, this could technically classified as an "AI-generated Image", but not in the same sense as an image prompted from scratch in a tool like Midjourney. 🔎 Editing images is commonplace, but in realms such as politics where trust and authenticity are essential, politicians and public figures need to be extra careful. Transparency about how images are edited (see Content Authenticity Initiative) and avoiding heavy-handed techniques that could be seen as deceptive is critical to audience trust in an AI-saturated world. This story gained significant momentum on Twitter and had many amateur 'digital Sherlocks' confidently claiming they could prove the image was AI-generated and that Matlock was a fraud. It's a good reminder to pause before jumping to conclusions and to have humility about your ability to spot AI-generated content in a complex and fast-moving technical landscape. #ai #elections #politics #trust

🤖 AI or not? In his latest piece, Hany Farid, UC Berkeley Professor, CAI advisor, examines our ability to distinguish between real and AI-generated content along with advances in perceptual studies. "If my performance on the pilot study is any indication, I predict that AI-generated voices have already passed through the uncanny valley," he writes. "At the same time, I think that AI-generated videos and face-swap and lip-sync deepfake videos are still on the other side of the uncanny valley, but I don't expect that to be the case for very long." 🟡 Are you "super recognizer"? Try the quiz to see if you can spot the difference!

What happens when social media platforms remove Content Credentials metadata? A new paper by John Collomosse, Principal Scientist, Adobe Research, and Andy Parsons, Sr. Director, Content Authenticity Initiative, describes the triad of technologies that make for permanent and durable Content Credentials. “This triad of technologies mutually support one another to create permanently attached Content Credentials,” they write. [The paper] “also discusses how authentic content supported by durable Content Credentials has the potential to unlock value creation in new ways, for example by tracing and rewarding the reuse of media within the creative economy.” 🟡 Learn more https://lnkd.in/eVNTtGAS