Two months ago, media giant Fox Corp. partnered with Polygon Labs, the team behind the Ethereum-focused layer 2 blockchain, to address the distrust issue with deepfakes.
Fox and Polygon launched the “Verify” protocol to protect their intellectual property rights while allowing consumers to verify the authenticity of content. Since then, government regulatory committees, publishers and others have viewed it as “the technology of today,” Fox Chief Technology Officer Melody Hildebrandt said on TechCrunch’s Chain Reaction podcast. possible solutions to the problem.
Hildebrandt said she is optimistic that as artificial intelligence technology enters the mainstream, more news outlets, media companies and other organizations will integrate the technology. This could be beneficial to both AI companies and creators: models gain knowledge, pipelines and individuals can validate their work.
Mike Blank, chief operating officer of Polygon Labs, said on the show that this is important for end users because they are not sure whether the content they consume is trustworthy.
“Obviously, there’s a rhythm in the mountains,” Hildebrandt said. She added that while most publishers want to participate in this type of ecosystem, they don’t want to give up “all their crown jewels.” This means imposing some technical guardrails that allow creators to make progress but still maintain some selectivity in the future.
“We had an instant epiphany,” Hildebrandt said. “I think we can look at blockchain provenance as a basis for thinking about the ‘model input’ problem and how to think about provenance and media in an AI-generated world.”
Blank said blockchain has the opportunity to help establish the accuracy of data and verify the proliferation of content online. Our hope is to uncover untrustworthy content so consumers can take some comfort in a world where things aren’t always trustworthy.
One of the main advantages of blockchain technology is its ability to store data in a way that ensures its integrity. Blockchain can also cryptographically verify the authenticity of images, text, videos or other media assets.
“When you put this content on-chain, you can now verify that the content was created by a certain individual or brand,” Blank said.
Ultimately, Blank said, it’s in a brand’s best interest to proactively provide verified information. “It will become increasingly easier for end users to understand where they are receiving content from and whether it is actually valid or verified in some way.”
AI-derived content is being generated at an unprecedented rate and will continue as AI becomes more powerful. “I think we all have to work together to make sure that the technology environment that we’re creating can scale to solve this problem at a speed that end-user consumers can consume effectively,” Blank said.
This story was inspired by an episode of the TechCrunch podcast Chain Reaction. Subscribe to Chain Reaction on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform to hear more stories and tips from entrepreneurs building today’s most innovative companies.
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