We live in an age of significant misinformation (aka Fake news) alongside access to more media and information than we have ever experienced, thanks to the internet and the world of technology. Verifying the legitimacy of information is something we take seriously at CBRC and this is the heart of all our information – our CBRC Verify solution is built to help prove the authenticity of Blockchain projects.
We are always looking for Blockchain projects that try to verify information at scale and here is an exciting new project. Verify is a new blockchain-based media platform created by Fox Corporation and built on Polygon to address the challenges of AI in content production. The goal is to authenticate original content and cryptographically sign it on-chain to have proof of the source and guarantee immutability. The project is open-source and still in development as a closed beta of Verify was launched on August 23. Let’s have a deeper dive into the project:
What is the problem with AI?
Verify aims to solve a relatively new problem that has intensified recently: AI-generated media. Although AI has been around for a moment, ChatGPT brought Generative AI to the majority and made it super simple to create AI-generated content. The downside is that it restricts creativity and originality. Even though some AI-detectors have been created, it is still hard to ensure with certainty that a certain content has been AI-generated or not. AI-generated content is not only limited to text, but can also be images, audios or videos. Consumers can use the Verify Tool to confirm authenticity of digital content from participating Fox sources. Media companies, on the other hand, can use the Verify tool to register content and grant usage rights to AI platforms. This is important not only for consumers but also for companies as a lot of AI tools scrap the web and use content without the consent of the company that created the content in question. As for consumers of content, they will know with certainty that a certain text or image that comes from a publisher originated at the source.
How does Verify work?
If we look a bit deeper on the tech side, Verify uses zero-knowledge (ZK) technology. It is integrated with Fox Corporation’s content management system (CMS) to create a ‘content graph’ for each piece of media, whether it is an image, a video or a text. The graph is then used to verify the authenticity of the content. This content graph is “a smart contract which stores the reference to metadata and licenses of a digital asset by binding it with a token that represents that asset through a unique identifier.” (Verify, 2024).
When a publisher adds content, it is signed cryptographically with a public key pair belonging to the publisher. That way, each piece of content is bound to a person or organisation of the real world. The signature represents the ownership of the asset and the metadata of the content. For each piece of content, it is possible to generate a unique identifier by hashing the raw data. As explained by Verify in their documentation: “A publicly registered key pair can sign this identifier with their private key to produce a signature which can be stored publicly. A consumer can use the signature and the unique identifier to recover the signers public key. These signatures act as a mechanism for an identity to claim ownership of a asset and an end user to verify the authenticity of a asset.“