"Untrustworthy digital content, akin to a poisoned well, endangers individuals, businesses, and society. The first signed AI-generated video proves that creating transparent digital media is both possible and vital. Possessing the antidote to a compromised information ecosystem, we must question why we haven't deployed it until now. It’s time to sign all digital content!"

– Nina Schick, Author, Speaker, Advisor, & AI Expert, NinaSchick.org

"The integrity of our information ecosystem relies on our ability to have a shared sense of reality, and that starts with responsible disclosure of where content originates from. Our partnership with Revel.ai and Nina Schick highlights that a more authentic internet is possible today by transparently marking whether content is human or computer-generated. This advancement opens up the ability for AI-generated content to flourish, while mitigating the potentially devastating impact on our information ecosystem and society at large."

– Jeff McGregor, CEO, Truepic

"When used well, AI is an amazing tool for storytelling and creative freedom in the entertainment industry. The power of AI and the speed at which it’s developing is something the world has never seen before. It’s up to all of us, including content creators, to design an ethical, authenticated, and transparent world of content creation so we can continue to use AI where society can embrace and enjoy it, not be harmed by it."

– Bob de Jong, Creative Director, Revel.ai

Headlines to Note 

• Pause on AI: Prominent technologists and AI researchers, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, have signed an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on the development of advanced AI systems. Over 1,100 signatories have joined in this effort, which also calls for additional best practices to be considered with respect to Gen AI, including provenance and watermarking systems to help distinguish real from synthetic and to track model leaks. 

• Project Providence: Truepic and Microsoft launched the world’s first interoperable image authentication platform called Project Providence. The primary goal of this platform is to safeguard the origin of images captured, from storage to display. The project's first use case is helping protect Ukraine’s cultural heritage. It was presented at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington ahead of the Summit on Democracy. 

• Adobe Firefly: Adobe has unveiled Firefly, its AI image synthesis generator. Firefly creates new images from text descriptions and is trained on legal and ethical sources. Before this, AI art generators such as Stable Diffusion had been met with copyright issues due to AI models trained on scraped, copyrighted images without consent. Adobe will attach content credentials to content generated by Firefly to show that Gen AI was used.

• Washington State Legislation: The State Senate passed a bill to provide political candidates with legal protection against "deepfake" videos, audio, and images used in political ads. The move is an effort to prevent further disruption of public trust in government and elected officials.

• Viral Pope Francis: Images of Pope Francis wearing trendy outerwear went viral, leading many to praise his style. However, the images are fake and were created using Midjourney. These images were the latest trend in hyper-realistic synthetic media.

• TikTok Updates Guidelines: On April 21, TikTok is rolling out updated guidelines, including a clearer policy on deepfakes, which must be labeled as fake or altered if they depict realistic scenes. In addition to banning deepfakes that mislead viewers and cause harm, deepfakes of private figures and young people will also be prohibited.