Tech
Fox partners with Polygon Labs to counter false mistrust
As deepfakes proliferate, their ability to mislead and sow distrust is becoming a major concern among security experts and the general public. A recent one survey by McAfee found that the vast majority of Americans (84%) are concerned about how deepfakes will be used in 2024, particularly as it relates to elections and speeches by public figures.
Several solutions to the deepfake problem have been proposed, from cryptocurrency watermarks to metadata: none perfect. But a growing number of news organizations are coalescing around blockchain technology as a way to verify that content comes from a trustworthy source.
Fox became the latest example, announcing today that it has partnered with Polygon Labs, a layer 2 blockchain focused on scaling Ethereum, to release an open source protocol for media companies to record their articles, photographs and more . Called Verify, Fox and Polygon are launching the protocol as a means to protect their intellectual property by allowing consumers to verify the authenticity of content.
“The Verify protocol establishes the origin and history of original journalism by cryptographically signing individual pieces of content on the blockchain,” Melody Hildebrandt, Fox CTO, told TechCrunch in an email interview. “It is powered by a content graph, which ties content to its verified publisher.”
The New York Times has explored a similar approach to news verification through its News Provenance Project, which uses blockchain to track metadata such as sources and edits to news photos. Truepic, the photo and video authentication startup, also authenticates content on the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains to establish a chain of custody.
However, Fox aims to roll out its technology on a larger scale than previous efforts.
In August, Fox launched a beta version of Verify, developed in collaboration with Polygon, to coincide with the GOP primary debate on Fox News. The company says it now uses Verify to record content from Fox-owned brands such as Fox News, Fox Business and Fox Sports, as well as Fox-affiliated television stations.
According to Hildebrandt, around 80,000 stories have been signed with Verify so far.
“The protocol is completely open source and can be used for free by publishers and other builders,” Hildebrandt said. “We intend and look forward to other media companies and content publishers embracing the Verify protocol and integrating it into a variety of publishing platforms.”
You can build third-party apps on top of Verify, which is designed to support all types of media content. But Fox has released its own tool that can be used to verify uploaded images or articles (via a URL) that match assets registered with the Verify protocol.
If a match is found, Fox’s Verify app will display publisher information associated with the content in addition to the original title and URL. If there is no match, it may be assumed that the content has been fabricated or otherwise manipulated.
In addition to authentication, Verify can be used as a way to license content to vendors for training or providing generative AI models, Hildebrandt says – a compelling use case as combat between marketers and news publishers heat up. Using Verify, publishers can apply controls to ensure they are adequately compensated depending on how a provider decides to implement their content.
“Verify is also a technical on-ramp for AI platforms to license content from publishers with hard-coded controls via smart contracts for LLM training or real-time use cases,” Hildebrandt said. “We are in discussions with several media companies and expect to be able to share more information on this front soon.”
Of course, this is all voluntary: Verify’s success depends on the publishers, news consumers, and generative AI providers who choose to adopt the platform. For various reasons, including competing authentication solutions, they may be dissuaded from doing so. Time, I suppose, will tell.