BEAVERTON, Ore., Jan. 27,
2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Researchers from Digimarc Corporation
(NASDAQ: DMRC), inventor of the Digimarc Platform for digital
identification and detection, will present details of a system for
mitigating the problem of Deepfake news videos using digital
watermarking at Electronic Imaging 2020 in Burlingame, CA, on Tuesday, January 28,
2020.
The Digimarc research paper describes how watermarking
technology can be used to prevent proliferation of Deepfake news.
In the proposed system, digital watermarks are embedded in audio
and video tracks of video clips of trusted news sources at the time
the videos are captured or before they are distributed. The
watermarks are detected at social media networks' portals, nodes
and back ends. The embedded watermark imparts a unique identifier
to the video that links it to a blockchain. The watermarks also
allow video source tracking, integrity verification and alteration
localization. The watermark detectors can be standalone software
applications, or they can be integrated with other applications.
The watermark detectors are used to perform three main tasks: (1)
alert the internet user when they watch an inauthentic news video,
so that they may discard it, (2) prevent a Deepfake news video from
propagating through the network, and (3) perform forensic analysis
to help track and remove Deepfake news video postings. The paper
includes proof of concept (POC) simulation results and will be
available after the conference presentation on Tuesday.
"The Deepfake problem poses potentially catastrophic risks,"
said Bruce Davis, CEO of Digimarc,
who recently participated in an industry summit focused on content
authenticity. "Digimarc's Platform can help. There is much work to
be done by industry and the research community to modernize media
in ways that support continuing trust in what we see and hear via
digital media that informs our decision-making and quality of
life."
Growing concerns challenge current laws
Concerns about
the authenticity of news (text, audio, and video) distributed over
the internet have reached an all-time high. In the past, people
trusted news that came from reputable newspapers and trustworthy
Radio/TV stations, but this trust is eroding for news distributed
on the internet. The internet has enabled a non-linear media
distribution model that does not guarantee the authenticity of
news. Internet users can digitally alter news of authentic sources
and re-distribute them through social media networks (e.g. YouTube,
Facebook, Twitter, etc.) as if they were originals coming from
legitimate sources. Usually, the alteration is done in three
different ways. The first is known as face-swap, in which the
original face in the video is replaced with another face. The
second is known as lip-sync, in which the speaker's voice is
replaced by the voice of an impersonator. The third type is known
as puppet-master, in which the person in the video is animated to
do a desired action.
The news authenticity problem is exacerbated with the advent of
deep learning technology. New powerful video creation software
tools have recently been developed using deep learning and are now
available on the internet for free, eliminating the need for the
talents and specialized software typically found in the movie
industry. A novice user can use an ordinary PC and leverage these
tools to quickly alter the looks, the speech, or the actions of the
people filmed in any video and generate fake videos that look
convincingly real. The generated fake videos are commonly known as
Deepfakes and their pervasiveness on the internet has doubled in
the nine months period from December
2018 to July 2019 according to
cyber-security company Deeptrace.
This rapid increase in the number of Deepfakes is alarming and
their use could be detrimental to society. They have been used
extensively for pornography and, to a much lesser extent, for
cyberbullying celebrities, mocking renowned politicians, and
robbing financial institutions. There is a growing concern that
their harmful use could substantially increase, potentially
influence elections, otherwise threaten security, and continue to
diminish public trust in news media.
Congress and many states are introducing new legislation and
policies to criminalize malicious Deepfakes. Non-profit
organizations are running national campaigns to educate the public
on how to deal with the danger of Deepfakes. These legislative
actions and educational efforts help, but they are not adequate by
themselves. It is imperative to develop advanced technical
solutions to detect and prevent Deepfakes from penetrating social
media networks.
System Architecture
The Digimarc research describes a
system for detecting Deepfake news videos that use robust audio and
image watermark and blockchain technologies. The video and
its metadata are stored for use in video forensic analysis in
social media networks and other distribution platforms. Proof of
concept simulations of the main parts of the system were performed.
Preliminary results are encouraging, indicating that digital
watermarking technology can be used successfully to link the video
to its original copy and to the metadata stored in a blockchain
network. They also show that the watermark embedded in the video
can be detected after applying tools to create Deepfakes. The
system can be generalized to include puppet-master Deepfakes and
types of video other than news.
The paper will be available following the
conference on the Digimarc website and on the Electronic
Imaging Conference open access library. Other notable presentations
by Digimarc researchers at the Electronic Imaging Conference
include color imaging, Signal Rich™ art, detector optimization and
digital watermarking for plastics sorting.
Digimarc Platform for Media Identification
Mitigation
of Deepfake threats is an application of Digimarc's highly
effective auto-identification and data capture Platform, supported
by a growing number of suppliers and application developers.
Digimarc will be presenting three other papers at Electronic
Imaging Conference describing elements of the Digimarc Platform,
continuing it history of innovation and engagement with the
academic community through publications and conference
participation. To watch a brief video on how the Digimarc Platform
works in retail applications, click here. For potential recycling
uses, click here. For more general information, visit
digimarc.com and follow us @digimarc to learn more about The
Barcode of Everything®.
About Digimarc
Digimarc Corporation (NASDAQ: DMRC) is
a pioneer in the automatic identification of everyday objects such
as product packaging and virtually any media, including print,
images and audio. The Digimarc Platform provides innovative and
comprehensive automatic recognition technologies to simplify
search, and transform information discovery through unparalleled
reliability, efficiency and security. Digimarc has a global patent
portfolio, which includes over 1,100 granted and pending patents.
These innovations include state-of-the-art identification
technology, Digimarc Barcode, as well as Digimarc Discover®
software for barcode scanning, image recognition, as layers of its
ground-breaking Platform. Digimarc is based in Beaverton, Oregon. The Digimarc Platform
enables applications that benefit retailers and consumer brands,
national and state government agencies, media and entertainment
industries, and others.
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