A Silicon Valley firm that since 2015 has developed software that can tell authentic photos and videos from digitally altered fakes has won a technology award sponsored in part by a venture capital firm created by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. TruePic, the now-award-winning “photo and video verification platform,” won the top prize at the annual “Identity & Truth Tech” Discovery Event.
The award is backed in part by In-Q-Tel, a non-profit tech investment company that describes is charter as “to support the mission of the U.S. intelligence and defense agencies.”
While In-Q-Tel normally makes small investments in tech startups, typically shelling out between $500,000 and $2 million in CIA cash to an individual startup, according to a Washington Post account.
But according to Business Insider, the Valley often looks to In-Q-Tel for a “seal of approval” on new companies, and other VC firms will then follow up on In-Q-Tel’s initial investment, pumping in up to $15 for every buck shelled out by the CIA.
As for TruePic, it was founded, according to a Fast Company profile, in 2015 by Craig Stack, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who saw that there might be money to be made in exposing scam artists on Craigslist and internet dating sites who post digitally altered pictures of themselves, or whatever it is they’re selling, to make them look more appealing.
But the company’s mission quickly expanded to sniffing out political propaganda, including for example the fake images posted on social media by Russian trolls to sway the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump. And in 2017, the company played an important role in verifying photos from Syria that exposed that government’s poison gas attacks on its own citizens—images that Syria, Russia and others attempted to dismiss as phonies.
According to the Fast Company profile, TruPic’s latest target is deepfakes, disturbingly realistic videos created by artificial intelligence algorithms which can make anyone appear to be saying or doing almost anything. Deepfakes can also be used for deceptive political propaganda—but were originally used to create fake “celebrity porn,” as AVN.com has covered.
Using AI technology, the faces of well-known Hollywood actresses were realistically integrated into hardcore porn videos, creating a new form of non-consensual porn.
At least according to its own online press release, In-Q-Tel’s interest in TruePic seems worthy enough. “Deepfake and deceptive technology can be applied to manipulate discourse and for other harmful purposes, which in turn has the potential to damage relationships, reputations, and undermine the provenance of truth. Because of the amplifying effect of social and other digital media, identifying truth from fake and manipulated content will become increasingly difficult,” the company wrote, explaining why it granted its award to the image verification platform.
What other uses the CIA might find for TruePic, however, remains to be seen.
Photo By Central Intelligence Agency / Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
