It’s not uncommon to see an image go viral — then get called out for being fake. News organizations unknowingly published false images of Osama bin Laden after his death, and there’s always the rounds of fake viral photos that are shared on Facebook and Twitter.
To combat photo falsification, FourandSix technologies introduced izitru, a free photo verification app and website that uses six forensic tests to determine a file’s authenticity. It’s not just looking at the metadata, said FourandSix co-founder Kevin Conner. The tests look at everything from how the file was compressed to what camera was used to whether the file has been resaved and manipulated.
“Every device and every piece of software has a somewhat different way of storing their JPEG files,” Conner said. “The most significant way that things differ is in the compression settings that the devices use.”
Image verification is often done by checking the metadata and scanning the image for any visual manipulation — wrong shadows or obvious Photoshop work. A large part of it is just having a healthy skepticism of images and trying to track down the original source. That’s where Conner hopes izitru can step in.
“We were initially addressing this whole issue from the standpoint of the recipient of the photo — what tools can we put in their hands so we they can analyze photos and decide whether they can trust them or not,” Conner said. “We started thinking maybe we need to turn this around and, instead of focusing on the recipient, focus on addressing the images at the source before they’re shared or as they’re getting shared.”
A photographer can upload an image, either anonymously or from their social network, and choose its copyright settings. Izitru will automatically run all six forensic tests and issue it a trust certification. If someone is at the scene of a disaster or even a beautiful sunrise, they could upload the photo to izitru and then distribute the link to journalism outlets or share on Twitter to guarantee its authenticity.
“It’s only going to be the original file as captured by the camera that’s going to pass,” Conner said. “It’s about creating a basic level of trust at the start.”
Given the challenge, I tried my best to fool the app into giving me high trust ratings.
I took a screenshot of a photo of my dog and tried to upload it, but I was rejected because the file was a PNG. I switched it to a JPEG, hoping that I could fool it by creating a new file, but it still didn’t work. I uploaded a photo of some pasta that I had posted on Instagram alongside the original — it caught the Instagram one. I tried downloading a stock photo, but it was also rejected. The only image it did accept were my original images taken on my iPhone.