DeepTrust Alliance open-sources synthetic media landscape
CREOpoint and DeepTrust Alliance Partner to Shine a Light on the Synthetic-Media Landscape and to Cooperate on Solutions based on the Best of Artificial and Human Intelligence
Social media giants struggle to contain manipulated media
despite an abundance of innovators engaged in developing real solutions
October 20, 2020, SAN FRANCISCO, California – CREOpoint and the DeepTrust Alliance have strongly rebuked the absence of robust partnerships between social media giants and the galaxy of large and small innovators capable of fixing the problem. To emphasize the point, they release the landscape summary below. (Regulators, NGOs, and Universities have been omitted for clarity.)
Open-sourced under Creative Commons license
“Too often social media platforms claim that regulation is the only solution to deepfakes, but they are deflecting responsibility.” explained Kathryn Harrison, CEO and founder of the DeepTrust Alliance. “A vibrant group of technologists, consultants, policymakers and entrepreneurs is building tools, capabilities and playbooks to help humans to make better decisions today.”
Technology leaders at social media companies recently noted that “the rapid advance of technology for creating deepfakes is contrasted by a dearth of effective technology to identify them.” Facebook admits it took a while for their systems to flag the slowed-down Nancy Pelosi video, and for fact-checkers to rate it as false. In fact, the highest-performing algorithm in the latest “Deepfake detection challenge” could only accurately determine if a video was real or not a disappointing 65% of the time. Other methods such as those focused on provenance, media literacy and regulatory constraints are encouraging but will take too long to come to fruition. The aim is to shift the public conversation towards a series of solutions based on the best of artificial and human intelligence. Otherwise, unchecked, damaging content spreads freely like digital wildfire, and today, harm is inflicted before intervention is even possible. There has been a loud and incessant drumbeat about the threats of synthetic media in mainstream press coverage. This focus on the problems has had a significant impact on public opinion.
With democracy at risk and armed with the latest insights and threat intelligence, CREOpoint has urgently cast a light on the exploding synthetic-media problem. To identify key players, CREOpoint leverages its patented intelligence technology to curate hundreds of the most damaging deep and cheap fakes along with more than 1,000 corresponding articles worldwide. Because the information is so universally important to humanity, the searchable repository updated 24/7 is available free of charge here.
Crowd-sourced with global experts, the deepfake landscape aims to accelerate that problem-solving. It’s released here under Creative Commons International License for the industry to improve. The left hand circle features companies building technology-enabled solutions, which automate, detect and disrupt the creation and distribution of manipulated content before their impact is irreversible. These solutions benefit from speed and scale, yet context is critically important and remains challenging for automated tools. The right hand side features businesses leveraging human expertise to parse nuance and context, especially once harm has been inflicted. At the center, organizations which integrate technology and human expertise are taking the lead to overcome the most pernicious threats. Harrison continued, “Deepfakes are part of an adversarial conflict. Coordination across actors is required to fix this problem.”
“The disinformation problem needs to be solved quickly to restore public trust, especially during and after the chaotic U.S. elections,” warns CREOpoint CEO Jean-Claude Goldenstein. “To answer the urgent need to quickly tell fake from fact, CREOpoint AI identifies experts and crowdsources a veracity score in minutes about questionable content. We seek to partner with organizations in a position to scale CREOpoint’s patented technology to “contain the spread of disinformation.”
Social media platforms face a torrent of disinformation, along with growing demands to take responsibility for content. Essentially employing “whack-a-mole”style actions against coordinated bad actors, the companies are hamstrung by spotty automated deepfake detection and labeling, ultimately underwhelming intervention to contain the spread of disinformation.
Nick Clegg, the former UK deputy prime minister now VP of global affairs and communications at Facebook argued in an editorial in the Financial Timesyesterday that “getting this right matters not only to the EU but to the future of the wider internet.” CREOpoint has the patented technologies to help.
The introduction of the ‘Protecting Americans from Dangerous Algorithms Act’’ introduced yesterday by Reps. Malinowski and Eshoo, is a move in the right direction. Europe is more likely to lead. It has a large advertising market for social media platforms and its AI talent is more likely to create regulatory-led innovators. In the run up to the December 2, 2020 Digital Services Act, emboldened EU regulators are considering drastic measures after Trump exerted control over Tik Tok ownership. The French Government recently summoned platforms like YouTube and Facebook and the content they disseminate after the recent tragedy of the beheading of a school teacher. Things began on social media and they ended on social media,” said Gabriel Attal, the French government spokesman. “We have to do better at bringing them under control.”
About CREOpoint, Inc.
CREOpoint helps organizations and leaders rapidly mitigate the irreversible damage of the spread of disparaging rumors and synthetic media. Its patented technology generates an explainable content veracity score crowdsourced from experts identified by artificial intelligence.The San Francisco and Paris-based tech startup acts at the intersection of artificial & human intelligence to restore trust in social media. Bringing human-rights values from France, tech-savviness from Estonia, and future focus from Silicon Valley in the U.S., CREOpoint was founded and funded by executives from technology, media, audit, law, consulting, and psychology disciplines, including leaders coming from Facebook, EY, The Financial Times, GE, United Technologies, WPP, BNP Paribas, Dassault Systèmes and Orange. CREOpoint licenses its patented technology to contain disinformation and toxic content to scale defensible solutions to protect brands and mitigate reputational damage. The company offers royalty-free use by NGOs, foundations, non-profits, and universities.
About DeepTrust Alliance
The DeepTrust Alliance is the only global non-profit confronting the threat of malicious deepfakes. Founded on the core tenet that no single person, company or country can overcome the threat of deepfakes alone, DeepTrust Alliance convenes a network of tech, government, security and industry organizations working to overcome the challenges of deepfakes. Only by building consensus on best practices, policy and infrastructure for trust can real success be achieved. The New York and Washington, DC based organization bridges the gap between technologists, policy makers, and business leaders through thought leadership and events.
Contact:
Steve Schuster
Rainier Communications
287 Turnpike Road
Westborough, MA 01581
steve@rainierco.com
+1-508-868-5892
JC Goldenstein
Founder & CEO
+1-914-310-4189 (currently in Europe)
www.creopoint.com
CA | NY | France | Estonia
jc@creopoint.ai
@CREOpoint
Kathryn Harrison
Founder and CEO
kathryn@deeptrustalliance.com
+1-917-830-8105
www.deeptrustalliance.org
Twitter: @trust_deep