Guardians of Truth: How blockchain is transforming battle against deepfakes

NEW DELHI: Just last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi voiced his concern over the prevalence of AI-generated deepfakes featuring himself and others that included actresses like Rashmika Mandanna, and Katrina Kaif.

Deepfakes are a major problem as they enable the creation of highly convincing yet entirely fabricated audio and video content. Leveraging sophisticated artificial intelligence, deepfakes can manipulate faces, voices, and even expressions, making it challenging to discern between real and manipulated media. This poses serious threats to misinformation, privacy, and trust. Deepfakes can be exploited to deceive individuals, damage reputations, and influence public opinion. The potential for malicious use, such as spreading fake news or impersonating individuals, underscores the urgent need to address the ethical, social, and security concerns associated with this technology.

Can technology counter this threat? Yes. Enter blockchain!

Blockchain technology has the potential to address the deep fake problem by providing a secure and transparent framework for verifying the authenticity of digital content. Blockchain can offer several solutions to mitigate the impact of deep fakes.

A key feature of blockchain is its immutability. Once data is recorded on the blockchain, it cannot be altered or tampered with. By storing authentic content and metadata on a blockchain, users can have confidence in the integrity of the information. This immutability ensures that once a piece of content is verified and recorded on the blockchain, it cannot be manipulated without leaving a trace, providing a reliable source of truth. Coupled with the fact that blockchain allows for the timestamping of data so with media files on a blockchain, users can establish a chronological order of content creation. This feature is crucial for verifying the authenticity of digital assets and helps in distinguishing between genuine and manipulated content.

This decentralised nature of blockchain could be leveraged to create a network of trust for content verification so now instead of relying on a single entity or centralised authority, a network of nodes can independently verify the authenticity of content, making it more resistant to manipulation or censorship.

Further, by using smart contracts content creators can establish specific rules and conditions for the use of their media including mechanisms for verification, licensing, and distribution, ensuring that the content is used in accordance with the creator’s intentions. Content creators can use blockchain’s cryptographic keys to sign their digital media, creating a unique identifier that verifies the authenticity of the content. Users can verify the signature using the corresponding public key, providing a mechanism for content authentication.

Blockchain can be integrated with decentralised content distribution platforms, ensuring that verified content is distributed in a secure and transparent manner. This will reduce the dissemination of deep fakes by providing users with a reliable source for authentic content. It’s worth mentioning while these initiatives showcase the potential of blockchain in addressing aspects of the deepfake problem, the technology is not a comprehensive solution on its own.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs may add billions to crypto market value: Coinbase

Cryptocurrency-market investors are growing more confident that the US Securities and Exchange Commission will soon give the green light for an exchange-traded fund that invests directly in bitcoin (BTC-USD). This narrative has been playing out in bitcoin itself, as the price of the highest-profile token surged nearly 35% just from a month ago.

Proponents of a spot bitcoin (BTC-USD) ETF have contended the approval of such a product would open up bitcoin investing to a wider range of investors and therefore become a more widely accepted asset class. Coinbase Global, the largest crypto exchange in the US, said in a report the product, if approved, may open crypto markets to players in traditional finance, including registered investment advisor. Over the long run, a BTC-USD ETF may add billions of dollars to the overall crypto market cap, which stood at $1.38 trillion on Thursday.