Mr. Beast Deepfake Scam (opens in new tab)

A single piece of hardware would take the image, then sign it. All of the chips for this would need to be integrated together as a secure element. The only way to get the image is from the hardware. Then it would be in the manufacturer's interest to keep the keys a secret. The keys could even be to a specific camera or batch of cameras. You then authenticate the images from the camera like your browser authenticates bytes from a web server. On X, the image gets posted, and then the browser can check the signature of the image against a key from the image sensor manufacturer. The browser displays "this image is authenticated by Sony" if they're the ones that made the image sensor.

If you're looking for a criticism, might I suggest, "won't somebody just print their photoshopped photo and then take a picture of that?". This criticism's semantic consistency would allow for such responses as "this could be remediated by signing additional data points such as time, gyroscope reading, and ...".

What I'm suggesting is about unfortunate centralization, the exact ideological antithesis of the technologies you are mock appreciating. I really wish I knew a better way. There's no distributed proof for truth.

Tying NFTs/Web3 to some future image sensor signing tech wouldn’t be an enhancement. The public sentiment about that space has shifted rapidly while scam after scam is uncovered.

Even if some of the underpinning ideas are useful, they should be reintroduced specifically for these new use cases.

The future of this tech needs to be developed in lock step with the existing web that people actually use. This means eventual uptake by major browsers, and hopefully agreement on open standards.