Fox media company launches protocol on Polygon to combat deepfakes

What’s new? US media conglomerate Fox Corporation has launched a beta version of the open-source Verify protocol on the Polygon PoS blockchain to establish the source of origin and authenticity of media content such as articles, videos, or images. The development will combat the spread of misleading information based on artificial intelligence-generated images and deepfakes.

Press release

What else is known? Fox Corp launched closed beta testing of Verify on August 23. So far, 89 000 pieces of content, including text and images from Fox News, Fox Business, Fox Sports, and other affiliates, have been registered for user verification.

Verify is now available to the public, allowing the community to contribute to the source code and update the protocol through forks if desired.

For example, media companies can register their content with Verify to validate its authenticity. Fragments of content on the network are assigned cryptographic signatures that allow users to determine, upon verification, whether they were taken from verified sources.

The protocol also provides smart contracts to establish programmatic conditions for access to content by AI platforms, creating new commercial opportunities for media companies.

Deepfakes are actively used by scammers to steal cryptocurrencies. For example, back in 2022, unknown people used this technology to contact development teams on behalf of a Binance senior executive, promising to list their tokens on the exchange for a fee.

That same year, hackers hacked into the South Korean government’s YouTube channel, renamed it SpaceX Invest, and posted a broadcast with a deepfake of Elon Musk discussing cryptocurrencies.

Additionally, last year, Binance accused ChatGPT developers of spreading fakes about the exchange’s founder Changpeng Zhao. The chatbot in response to users’ questions about the businessman allegedly gave out information that he was an official of the Communist Party of China.

Later, Binance representatives said that deepfakes are increasingly being used to bypass user identification procedures.