| ▲ | tristanj 3 hours ago |
| Apple doesn't address the modified photo replay situation, where you take a picture of an already edited image. Photoshop / AI-gen an image -> display on a high-resolution monitor -> photograph the monitor with iPhone 18 Pro -> valid Apple Reference image. To get valid reference photos, you can go to the actual physical location, put the iPhone/monitor in a cardboard box to block external light, then photograph the monitor. Paint the inside of the box using Vantablack (stopping reflections) and cover the LiDAR projector with tape. I can't wait to see Apple Verified™ photos of UFOs flying over the Golden Gate Bridge. |
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| ▲ | pveierland 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Claim 7 in this patent application describes how depth sensors are used as part of an image authentication process, which would make such a workaround more difficult: https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa... The Apple Reference Image feature is here launched on iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max that both have built-in LiDAR sensors that could be used for this process. |
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| ▲ | tristanj 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Apple's current implementation doesn't integrate LiDAR. And LiDAR wouldn't be enough here, it's trivial to block the projector and hide the dot pattern. No dot pattern = iPhone thinks the object is far away, which is what happens in landscape photos. A better fix is to take photos with all three iPhone cameras simultaneously, ideally as a 2-3s video, and use the parallax/multiple perspectives to extract depth information. The video files (Possibly audio too) could also be included with the verified image as additional verification. They can also prevent photos if iPhone detects the LiDAR sensor is covered, similar to how Meta does it with their camera glasses. | | |
| ▲ | dylan604 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > it's trivial to block the projector and hide the dot pattern. No dot pattern = iPhone thinks the object is far away, which is what happens in landscape photos. I've never looked at the LiDAR hardware, but where is the emitter in relation to the receiver. Why would the LiDAR not reflect off of whatever you're blocking it with and return a very short flight meaning it was very close? | | | |
| ▲ | pveierland 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I don't think it's an either or - additional data signals that need to correlate to authenticate will increase confidence. You can use multiple other signals to evaluate whether something is truly a landscape photo, and in that case not require a LiDAR capture, but if you are inside and at close range then you could assume that it should be part of scoring the authentication. Similarly, LiDAR alone will help disqualify cases where someone is just taking a picture of e.g. a landscape target of the Golden Gate, but that it shown on a screen 1 meter away. | |
| ▲ | sandcat_ 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Right but I’d argue that realistically this feature is going to be most useful when taking photos of things reasonably close by, people especially, rather than landscape photography. | |
| ▲ | halestock 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This approach makes me wonder if the future is actually going to move towards visual cryptography. | | |
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| ▲ | BugsJustFindMe 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | iPhone lidar only works up to like 16 feet in the easiest lighting conditions (indoors) and may be functionally ineffective outdoors. | | |
| ▲ | pveierland 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Still, that means that either the fake target scene and your screen presenting it would need to be outside of LiDAR sensor bounds, or you'd need to find a way to make the depth sensor data conform with your fake scene, both increasing the difficulty of producing a forgery. | | |
| ▲ | BugsJustFindMe an hour ago | parent [-] | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49721878 > increasing the difficulty of producing a forgery The problem with this thinking is twofold: 1) Whether it actually meaningfully increases the difficulty of a forgery remains to be seen. Despite their initial language about discerning real events, we see no details here about what scene information is used. 2) It increases the potential value of a forgery because now your forgery is attested by Apple. So it either makes it easier to defraud people or more worthwhile to put in the effort to defraud people or both. None of those outcomes are great. |
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| ▲ | gruez 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | So you need a big enough screen to cover the entire field of view at 16 ft? Sounds expensive | | |
| ▲ | nomel 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Or, probably just some optics, like a slanted $9 IR mirror [1] in front of it, to direct the lidar to the sky/absorption box. Then you can point at the high res HDR TV that's probably already in your living room. [1] https://commonlands.com/products/ir-cut-filters-csp650?srslt... | |
| ▲ | BugsJustFindMe 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Well, first, that's only expensive if you're poor. The world is absolutely full of people who can easily piss away your entire annual income throwing a house party. But I really mean that if the lidar barely works outdoors anyway then actually you don't need to be 16 feet away at all. Anyway, one may presume that they've thought about this. | | |
| ▲ | brookst 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Thought about it and also are bright enough not to fall for the “if a single person dies wearing a seat belt, we should abandon seat belts because they do no good at all” fallacy. It’s almost certainly possible to fool v1 of this system, for some images, in some contexts. It would be shocking if the first implementation was completely perfect. But maybe it’s better than nothing? | | |
| ▲ | MisterKent an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | The problem is that if defeating it is trivial, then it _authenticates_ fake images. The problem is that it makes it easier to fool people and provide "cryptographic" evidence of validity, backed by big tech. It's purpose is to stop bad actors from passing of fake as real just as much as it is to prevent real images being dismissed as fake. | |
| ▲ | alwillis 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > It’s almost certainly possible to fool v1 of this system, for some images, in some contexts. It would be shocking if the first implementation was completely perfect. Knowing Apple, they've been working on and testing Apple Reference Image for years. It being perfect isn't the issue; it's that random people on the internet who are just learning about this assume Apple's engineers haven't already thought about everything (and more) mentioned in this thread. | |
| ▲ | BugsJustFindMe 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > But maybe it’s better than nothing? I think this will depend on how it gets used. I can imagine numerous outcomes where it's in fact worse than nothing (significantly more effective blackmail, for instance). | |
| ▲ | akersten 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > maybe it’s better than nothing? While that is not quite my bar of confidence when implementing wide-reaching technologies that have numerous unexplored knock-on effects, I guess the calculus must have been different on Infinite Loop recently. | |
| ▲ | dd8601fn an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I like that seatbelt argument example. I’ve seen that type of argument a million times, and I’ll certainly reuse that. |
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| ▲ | somethinsfishy an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Put some sugar on it. Please. | | |
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| ▲ | geokon 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | furthermore, couldnt you do parallax from the multiple cameras as well as flicker the flash? seems pretty easy to make it sufficiently difficult to trick the system |
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| ▲ | osy 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It also doesn't prevent you from staging an image or anything that's existed since photography was invented. But that's not the problem they're trying to solve. > Today, powerful, widely available AI tools allow users to easily generate or alter photorealistic images to a degree that was difficult to imagine just a few years ago. Photoshop has existed for decades and so has fake images. This is a low friction way to attest "this image came from an iPhone sensor and Apple approved it". It will still take the usual image forensics to determine if the scene it depicts is legitimate. |
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| ▲ | BugsJustFindMe 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > "But that's not the problem they're trying to solve." It is the problem that they say they're trying to solve, though. They specifically say "where the essential role of a photograph is to prove that something actually happened". It fails the reasonable person test to say that the "something" in that phrase refers to the act of taking the photo itself. Likewise in "distinguish between photographs that depict real events and...". | | |
| ▲ | reader9274 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, it is proving something actually happened, that is your monitor screen showing something you photographed. | | | |
| ▲ | brookst 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | So, in your view, photography has been fatally flawed since the late 1800’s, and mere mitigation of AI image gen are insufficient if they don’t also solve actors impersonating real people? | | |
| ▲ | BugsJustFindMe 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > So, in your view, photography has been fatally flawed since the late 1800’s Used in a capacity as evidence? Uh, yes? Duh? Do you seriously believe otherwise? Anyway, that scenario is made worse not better by Apple promising captured veracity. |
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| ▲ | spiderice 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is so stupid. This makes it like, a thousand times harder to fake a photo than it would otherwise be. You pedants imagining a way to fake it doesn't change that. | | |
| ▲ | BugsJustFindMe 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > This makes it like, a thousand times harder to fake a photo than it would otherwise be. The problem with this thinking is twofold: 1) Whether it actually meaningfully increases the difficulty of a forgery remains to be seen. Despite their initial language about discerning real events, we see no details here about what scene information is used. 2) It increases the potential value of a forgery because now your forgery is attested by Apple. So it either makes it easier to defraud people or more worthwhile to put in the effort to defraud people or both. None of those outcomes are great. | | |
| ▲ | porkshoe an hour ago | parent [-] | | You worry that a technology that you have never used nor evaluated might not work in practice... Therefore because of your worry (which is based on remarkably little information), it's a bad technology? Come the fuck on. That's beyond luddite bullshit. | | |
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| ▲ | baxtr an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This sounds like it could be done, but the costs for doing so are comparably high. I think the idea is to control the easy, cheap mass production of AI gen picture and not 100% coverage. That’s a tradeoff I can live with. |
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| ▲ | Glyptodon 24 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I suspect they have ways to ID at least some things like this somehow in ways that will lead to key revocation. |
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| ▲ | walrus01 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Paint the inside of the box using Vantablack But you're only allowed to do that if your name if Anish Kapoor |
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| ▲ | ricksunny an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >I can't wait to see Apple Verified™ photos of UFOs flying over the Golden Gate Bridge. There’s no such thing as a Golden Gate Bridge. Prove it. |
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| ▲ | 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | srik 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's less about proving a photo's truth than about attesting it. |
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| ▲ | amanj41 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Sony's analogous solution (https://authenticity.sony.net/camera/en-us/) claims 3d depth information is built in, I'm sure Apple could do the same given at least some iPhone models have LiDAR on the back |
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| ▲ | tristanj 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | This would work for close up shots taken on iPhone, but not landscape shots. The infrared dots the iPhone LiDAR projects are too weak to appear over long distances. Also the dots can be trivially blocked by putting your finger over the sensor, sometimes improving photo quality. I do this frequently when I want to take a photo through a window. The absence of the dot matrix tells the iPhone to focus on the background far away instead of the windowpane. | | |
| ▲ | dd8601fn an hour ago | parent [-] | | > I do this frequently when I want to take a photo through a window. I feel really dumb for not having thought of this. |
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| ▲ | nvme0n1p1 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Yeah, such systems have been tried (and been hacked) for decades now. https://www.elcomsoft.com/news/428.html https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2011/04/nikon-image-authenticatio... You don't even have to travel to the location, you can just spoof GPS. And of course that will only be needed until some eastern european kid gets bored one weekend and the signing keys magically appear on pastebin. It's funny to see Apple fall into this same trap. |
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| ▲ | Rohansi an hour ago | parent [-] | | To be fair Apple of all companies have the best shot at pulling it off. They've been perfecting their hardware security for years for other reasons and this is just another way to take advantage of that work. But yes, if someone breaks it then the trust is gone and it casts doubt on all of the photos that were ever captured using the broken system. |
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| ▲ | dinobones 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Is this really that big of a flaw in this implementation? I don't think it's worth the additional complexity to address it. (Encoding depth information in some way, trying to detect "flat" surfaces, whatever). Discerning a camera taken image of an image is typically very very easy. The collors/exposure/etc will all be obviously wrong in ways to a human, even without doing any analysis. |
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| ▲ | BugsJustFindMe 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | You mean that it is sometimes very easy. But it is also sometimes impossible. You seem to be thinking only of poor quality photos of poor quality prints, but there's no basis for assuming those characteristics. |
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