Eventually, we will just have to accept that photographic proof is no longer proof.

There are ways that you could guarantee an image is valid. You would need a hardware security module inside the camera, which signs a hash of the picture with its own built-in security key that can’t be extracted and a serial number that it generates. That can prove that an image came from a particular camera, and if you change even one pixel of that image the signature won’t match anymore. I don’t see this happening anytime soon. Not mainstream at least. There are one or two camera manufacturers that offer this as a feature, but it’s not on things like surveillance cameras or cell phones nor will it be anytime soon.

A camera can only show us what it sees. It doesn’t objectively necessitate a viewer’s interpretation of it. I remember some of us being called down to the principal’s office (before the age of footage-based scandals, which if anything imply shortcoming in the people progressing the rulings to be in so much awe at, sadly a common occurrence, adding to the “normal people distaste” I have, and something authorities have made sure I’m no stranger to) who may say “we saw you on the camera doing something against the rules” only to be responded to with “that’s not me, I have an alibi” or “that’s not me, I wouldn’t wear that jacket” or “that’s not me, I can’t do that person’s accent” (aforementioned serial slander of me serving as a prime example where this would be the case). In connection to the process, you might say it’s witness testimony from a machine and that they’ve “just started” to get into the habit of not being very honest to the humans in thw court. I remember my first lie.

I think other answers here are more essential - chain of custody, corroborating evidence, etc.

That said, Leica has released a camera that digitally signs its images, and other manufacturers are working on similar things. That will allow people to verify whether the image is original or has been edited. From what I understand Leica has some scheme where you can sign images when you update them too, so there’s a whole chain of documentation. Here’s a brief article

When video or audio evidence is submitted, it will be questioned as to its authenticity. Who recorded it? On what device? Then we’ll look for other corroborating evidence. Are there other videos that captured the events in the background of the evidence video? Are there witnesses? Is there contradictory evidence?

Say there’s a video depicting a person committing murder in an alley. The defense will look for video from the adjoining streets that show the presence or absence of the murderer before or after. If those videos show cars driving by with headlights on, they will look for corresponding changes in the luminosity of the crime video. If the crime happened in the daytime, they will check that the shadows correspond to Sun’s position at that moment. They’ll see if the reflections of objects match the scene. They’ll look for evidence that the murderer was not at the scene. Perhaps a neighbor’s surveillance camera shows they were at home or their cell phone indicated they were someplace else.

But if all these things indicate the suspect was in the alley and the video is legitimate, that’s powerful evidence toward a conviction.

Fake evidence, e.g. forged documents, are not not new things. They take things like origin, chain of custody etc into account.

As someone who works in the field of criminal law (in Europe, and I would be shocked if it wasn’t the same in the US) - I’m not actually very worried about this. By that I don’t mean to say it’s not a problem, though.

The risk of evidence being tampered with or outright falsified is something that already exists, and we know how to deal with it. What AI will do is lower the barrier for technical knowledge needed to do it, making the practice more common.

While it’s pretty easy for most AI images to be spotted by anyone with some familiarity with them, they’re only going to get better and I don’t imagine it will take very long before they’re so good the average person can’t tell.

In my opinion this will be dealt with via two mechanisms:

• Automated analysis of all digital evidence for signatures of AI as a standard practice. Whoever can be the first person to land contracts with police departments to provide bespoke software for quick forensic AI detection is going to make a lot of money.

• A growth in demand for digital forensics experts who can provide evidence on whether something is AI generated. I wouldn’t expect them to be consulted on all cases with digital evidence, but for it to become standard practice where the defence raises a challenge about a specific piece of evidence during trial.

Other than that, I don’t think the current state of affairs when it comes to doctored evidence will particularly change. As I say, it’s not a new phenomenon, so countries already have the legal and procedural framework in place to deal with it. It just needs to be adjusted where needed to accommodate AI.

What concerns me much more than the issue you raise is the emergence of activities which are uniquely AI dependent and need legislating for. For example, how does AI generated porn of real people fit into existing legislation on sex offences? Should it be an offence? Should it be treated differently to drawing porn of someone by hand? Would this include manually created digital images without the use of AI? If it’s not decided to be illegal generally, what about when it depicts a child? Is it the generation of the image that should be regulated, or the distribution? That’s just one example. What about AI enabled fraud? That’s a whole can of worms in itself, legally speaking. These are questions that in my opinion are beyond the remit of the courts and will require direction from central governments and fresh, tailor made legislation to deal with.

Science has proven that the entire model of human memory as factual testimony is a fallacy. That came out long before AI in the public space. I don’t think anyone has addressed that revelation. I doubt anyone will address this one. Hell, there are still people sketching the courtroom like cameras don’t exist. A president can stage a failed coup and a SC judge can fly the traitor’s flag and there are no consequences for either.

So what will be done, absolutely nothing, unless some billionaires stage a proxy war over it.

Fake does not change what actually happened. Just look for facts in the real world that support the theory. Remember, photoshop existed before AI. We have DNA checks today.

It’s a scary question, made a lot less scary by whoever it was that said “you know, I guess we’ve had text deepfakes a long time”

Eventually people just know it could be fake, so they look for other ways of verifying. The inevitability and the scale of it mean that, at the very least, we’ll have all our brainpower on it eventually.

It’s the meantime where shit could get wild.

Maybe each camera could have a unique private key that it could use to watermark keyframes with a hash of the frames themselves.

I’m not a tech person, so I’ll take the lowest hanging fruit. The obvious answer is to write a program that can detect AI. Then there will be a competition between AI fakes and AI detection. This is similar to what we have in sports. There are forbidden enhancement procedures (e.g., steroids, blood doping, etc.) that have to keep improving in subtlety so not to be detected by Anti cheating measures.

Disclaimer: I’m not an expert, just an interested amateur wanting to chat and drawing comparisons from past leaps in tech and other conversations/videos.

For a time expert analysis will probably work. For instance, the “click here to prove your not a robot” boxes can definitely be clicked by robots, but for now the robot moves in detectably different ways. My guess is that, for at least a while, AI content will be different from actual video in ways like code. There will probably be an arms race of sorts between AI and methods to detect AI.

Other forms of evidence like DNA, eyewitness accounts, cell phone tracking etc. will likely help mitigate deceitful AI somewhat. My guess is that soon video/audio will no longer be considered as ironclad as it was even a few years ago. Especially if it comes from an unverified source.

There are discussions about making AI tools have a digital “watermark” than can be used to identify AI-generated content. Of course this won’t help with black market-type programs, but it will keep most people out of the “deep fake for trials” game.

When it comes to misinformation on social media though, well…it’s probably going to get crazy. The last decade or so has been a race at an unprecedented scale to try and keep up with BS “proof”, psuedoscience, etc. Sadly those on the side of truth haven’t always won. The only answer I have for that is making sure people are educated about how to deal with misinformation and deepfakes - eg. awareness they exist, identifying reputable sources and expert consensus, and so on.

I doubt these tools will ever get to a level of quality that can confuse a court. They’ll get better, sure, but they’ll never really get there.

For the longest time now, from before AI, before NFT was a thing i had an idea to incorporating blockchain tech into real life media footage to combat the rise of misinformation.

The metadata, original author would be stored on this chain the moment footage is recorded. The biggest challenge is that this means the devices themselves need to be connected.

Adoption would be slow but i imagined news and official channels make use of this tech first. Eventually all footage outside of this will be seen as not trustworthy

Then NFTBros came along and people have shit on this idea ever since. Some days i feel that was a conspiracy to ruim out perception of potential but more likely humans where just greedy.

I still believe this could work. Detailed example below:

The system works with a fair amount of transparency, verifiable digital signatures for recording devices and their owners. Professional cameras and organizations would have publicly known IDs, while individuals could choose to remain pseudonymous authors but would need to build credibility over time.

Let’s say BBC records an interview. When viewers watch this content on any platform, they can access blockchain verification through an embedded interface (perhaps a small icon in the corner). This shows the complete chain of custody from recording to broadcast.

The system verifies content through computational comparisons. When a raw interview is edited into a final piece:

• Each original clip has a unique blockchain signature
• The final edited version’s signature can be compared against source material
• Automated analysis shows what percentage of original footage matches
• Modifications like color correction or audio adjustments are detected through signature differences
• Additional elements like station logos or intro sequences have their own verified identifiers