Vlad Morariu, senior research scientist at Adobe,explains that a variety of tools already exist to help document and trace the digital manipulation of photos. “File formats contain metadata that can be used to store information about how the image was captured and manipulated. Forensic tools can be used to detect manipulation by examining the noise distribution, strong edges, lighting and other pixel values of a photo. Watermarks can be used to establish original creation of an image.
Vlad suspected technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, could be used to more easily, reliably and quickly detect whether or not any part of a digital image had been manipulated, and if so, what aspects were modified.
Three common tampering techniques—splicing, where parts of two different images are combined; copy-move, where objects in a photograph are moved or cloned from one place to another; and removal, where an object is removed from a photograph, and filled-in.
Every time an image is manipulated, it leaves behind clues that can be studied to understand how it was altered. “Each of these techniques tend to leave certain artifacts, such as strong contrast edges, deliberately smoothed areas, or different noise patterns.
Now, what used to take a forensic expert hours to do can be done in seconds. The results of this project are that AI can successfully identify which images have been manipulated. AI can identify the type of manipulation used and highlight the specific area of the photograph that was altered.
Many photographs and cameras have unique noise patterns, so it is possible to detect noise inconsistencies between authentic and tampered regions, especially if imagery has been combined from two or more photos.
While these techniques are still being perfected, and do not necessarily solve the problem of “absolute truth” of a photo, they provide more possibility and more options for managing the impact of digital manipulation, and they potentially answer questions of authenticity more effectively.
News source: https://theblog.adobe.com/spotting-image-manipulation-ai/
Watch more Technology videos at our YouTube Channel QualityPointtech
