Content Authenticiy Initiative

[maxbelloni]

Today (26/10/2023) Leica has launched the M11-P (https://leica-camera.com/en-US/press/new-leica-m11-p#), a version of the M11 camera which incorporates a chip that implement the concept of the Content Authenticity Initiative. This is the first camera which integrates natively this feature.

I think that this initiative is of main interest for prefessional (but not limited to) photographers, and that a professional grade software like IMatch should be interested in integrating this initiative in its features.

Participants to CAI are top-level subjects (Adobe, Nikon, BBC, Leica and many, many others), and get informations about the initiative  is easy to find on the net.

Some open source software is already available on the site (https://contentauthenticity.org/), and being part of it is totally free.

Hope this can be a further opportunity for IMatch to increase its top-rated quality rank and enhance it's visibility.

What does Mario think about?

(this has been posted too on Affinity Photo forum)

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Massimo (Max) Belloni
Italy

[jch2103]

This looks like it could involve ExifTool, although I didn't have a change to dig into details. I'm unclear where the authentication data is stored (somewhere in the image data, I assume), so perhaps it wouldn't be affected by anything IM does (but certainly could/would be affected by various editing/processing software). I can see it would be useful to a range of photo users, including forensics and journalism.

[Mario]

I know about the CAI and have read the docs a while ago.
It's mostly born out of fear from AI-generated images and how, if everyone plays along, can verify by whom, when and where an image was created. Basically like what we have in forensic imagery for a long time.

There is a CAI JavaScript and Rust API and a command line tool. I could integrate any of them into IMatch, if there is a reason to do so. Maybe this is something that will be integrated into ExifTool even at some point.

Before I spend time on this, I'll wait for it to gain some traction and there is a notable demand in the IMatch user community.

[maxbelloni]

Hi Mario,

I was almost sure that you were already well aware of CAI (the contrary would be surprising to me...)

I think that the argument (and the AI fear in particular) will gain momentum in the future: it is interst both of the professional as well as the amateur which participates in prizes or other similar activities.

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Massimo (Max) Belloni
Italy

[Mario]

I think that the argument (and the AI fear in particular) will gain momentum in the future: it is interst both of the professional as well as the amateur which participates in prizes or other similar activities.

I think so, too.
So it's important that one can proof and verify that an image is an original and who created it.
I have no issues with integrating CAI into IMatch, for adding or reading/displaying/verifying the information.
Although I figure that this might get complicated unless there is some support from ExifTool.
Changing metadata, batch processing, image generation etc. all affects CAI information. If this gets traction and there is sufficient demand from the IMatch user base, I will spend some time with reading all docs, figure out if, how and where this affects IMatch, how many features I have to add and how much code to write.