Google Releases a Tool To Spot Faked and Doctored Images

Jigsaw, a technology incubator at Google, has released an experimental platform called Assembler to help journalists and front-line fact-checkers quickly verify images. MIT Technology Review reports: Assembler combines several existing techniques in academia for detecting common manipulation techniques, including changing image brightness and pasting copied pixels elsewhere to cover up something while retaining the same visual texture. It also includes a detector that spots deepfakes of the type created using StyleGAN, an algorithm that can generate realistic imaginary faces. These detection techniques feed into a master model that tells users how likely it is that an image has been manipulated. "Assembler is a good step in fighting manipulated media -- but it doesn't cover many other existing manipulation techniques, including those used for video, which the team will need to add and update as the ecosystem keeps evolving," the report notes. "It also still exists as a separate platform from the channels where doctored images are usually distributed. Experts have recommended that tech giants like Facebook and Google incorporate these types of detection features directly into their platforms. That way such checks can be performed in close to real time as photos and videos are uploaded and shared."

Interesting that we're coming full circle

[Solandri]

• 1800s and before: You couldn't trust what you heard or read about someone. You could only trust what you see with your own eyes what they did, with your own ears what they said in person.
• 1900s: Photographs, audio recordings, and video become a thing. You could now reliably believe what a person said or did, even if you weren't actually there.
• 2000: Photo editing, audio editing, and video editing become a thing. We return to only being able to trust what we see with our own eyes, hear with our own ears in person.

Re:

[AHuxley]

Communist nations would publish new books with altered images and text to fit who was still officially part of history.
Find a first and later book and its a fun to see who got removed and how...
Now an ad company wants to help detect fake news for their approved side of politics...

"Photos and videos are uploaded and shared" no more funny art about that stump speech coughing spell.
The ad company says the coughing spell was political fake news and all uploaded images of it are detected as "fake".
The ad

Re: Interesting that we're coming full circle

[Nidi62]

It is interesting to watch the different versions of Soviet propaganda reels, where major figures would be edited in/out depending on who was in favor at the moment. Of course, given the technological limitations of the time, it is pretty obvious.

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[AHuxley]

Now an ad company just never approves the image for political reasons after been uploaded.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, you should start breathing more slowly.

A third of my life happened in a communist country, my family has always been opposed to the regime (we suffered from it), and yet I've not seen or heard of a popular book that was republished with altered images.

It would be impossible anyway, book sales were completely untracked, and everyone interested could have the 1st, 2nd, 3rd edition as they please. The second-hand book markets were large, well-stocked and dependable, even if half-legal and half-gray.

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[fustakrakich]

1984 was fiction.

1984 was a diary

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[AHuxley]

AC "The Photo Book That Captured How The Soviet Regime Made The Truth Disappear"
https://www.newyorker.com/cult... [newyorker.com]
Soviet Space Propaganda: Doctored Cosmonaut Photos
https://www.wired.com/2011/04/... [wired.com]

Re:

[_Sharp'r_]

2020: Google comes out with News Photo checker.
  Palestinians hardest hit [google.com].

Re: Interesting that we're coming full circle

[Malays Boweman]

"1900s: Photographs, audio recordings, and video become a thing. You could now reliably believe what a person said or did, even if you weren't actually there" Except photographic fakery existed scince the dawn of photography. Good old fashioned voice acting and costumes took care of the other two.

You know how it goes on, too...

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

• 2030 - Samsung releases implant "mobile communications chip" that bypasses your eyes and sends imagery directly to the brain.
• 2031 - Apple follows with their iNfinite Reality chip.
• 2024 - Trump wins third term, first since FDR, against Joe Biden. The Democratic party blames it on "The Brain Fartening", a "Russian hacker operation" that has allegedly penetrated the Samsung and Apple implant chips and influenced the vote. A CIA leaker is shot minutes after he dumps a cache of documents and software pointing

Re:

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Exactly what I've been saying. We can't know future tech levels in 50 or 100 years, and less so than 1900 could predict today, so don't care about problems we see, anymore than 1900 screams about horse poop dust and every morning in your house.

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[fustakrakich]

We return to only being able to trust what we see with our own eyes, hear with our own ears in person.

Yeah, except don't trust anything you hear, and only half of what you see.

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[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Many rely on trust in what they feel being deceptive from what it actually is, their own hand.

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[AmiMoJo]

The Soviets were doing fairly advanced digital photo editing back in the 50s. The Cottingley Fairies photos were made in 1917 and fooled a lot of people, with the technology of the day being unable to prove they were fakes.

All that has changed is that it's got easier to do.

Ya, but ...

[fahrbot-bot]

Google Releases a Tool To Spot Faked and Doctored Images

Can it spot fake and doctored breasts -- 'cause that would be really helpful -- or do I have to take a picture of them first? Does it come as a phone app, or do I have to carry my laptop around? Come on Google!

Phone fake bokeh

[future assassin]

will that be included in the tool?

Great tool

[ubergeek65536]

Now I can tell if my fakes can be detected.

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[martinX]

Yep - first thing anyone will do.

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[idji]

and use it as part of a GAN (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_adversarial_network) to build undetectable fakes.

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[AmiMoJo]

Won't work. You will end up with an image that the computer can't tell is fake but a human can because it looks nothing like the thing it's supposed to be.

You would need a human to use as input to the GAN as well.

Obligatory

[Dunbal]

It can tell by the pixels, because it has seen many photoshops in its time.

TinEye?

[GuB-42]

We’ve integrated an image auto-upgrading process, powered by TinEye, a popular reverse image search provider, which takes original images and finds larger and/or better quality versions of them in an effort to ensure the best image possible is analyzed by the detectors.

Interesting, why does a Google research group uses TinEye, a Google image search competitor?

Re:

[AHuxley]

To find the quality origin image when sorted by date.
The users, site that allows funny memes, art, cartoons about politics to be uploaded.
Find the origin site of the creative political art.
So journalists, academics and front-line fact-checkers can do their duty.

Re:

[fustakrakich]

why does a Google research group uses TinEye, a Google image search competitor?

To see if they are worth buying out...

How do we try it? Like FotoForensics

[GuB-42]

Is there a way to submit an image and try for ourselves?

In the meantime, you can use FotoForensics [fotoforensics.com]. It is a lot more hands-on approach, giving you only a few tools to help you, but they have nice tutorials.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[DNS-and-BIND]

What makes you think that the Google employees involved even know what an assembler is? You think Google hires on merit, or skin color and school they graduated from? What did James Damore teach us?

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[Frescard]

Because the people who wrote this have no idea that Assembler is a programming language...

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[SethJohnson]

Did they really have to name it Assembler? Why pollute a perfectly good search term?

Not only big corporations, but small project groups sometimes do this. Perhaps they think they will bubble up in the search results by attaching their project branding to common search terms, but in reality this pushes them into obscurity.

Examples:

389 Directory Server [fedoraproject.org]
Computer Chip [wikipedia.org]

If you're trying to troubleshoot / research issues with either of these two items, it's a beast of a google expedition to weed out the f

I just released a similar tool.

[BAReFO0t]

It detects if a tool that spots faked or doctored images, is faked and doctored. ;)

And if it is hence more misleading and giving false weight to its bad results

Guess what score this Google tool got. ;)

[My point: Question:Who watches the watchmen? Answer: Watching something cannot be delegated, let alone to unknown untrusted third parties. The final watchman will always have to be you yourself.]

I felt a great disturbance

[Kreplock]

...as if a thousand Thots cried out, then suddenly were silenced.

Where's the Tool?

[westcountyboy]

The title of the article suggests there is a tool available. Where? Gave fotophorensics a look and the state of the art does not seem too far along or maybe I'm missing something.