nature_Hany Farid discusses how to detect image manipulations — and the increasing sophistication of forgers.
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Eli Burakian/Dartmouth College
Hany Farid.
Hany Farid, a computer scientist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, specialises in detecting manipulated images and videos. Farid, who provides his services to clients as varied as universities, media organizations, and law courts, says that image manipulation is becoming both more frequent and more sophisticated. He spoke to Nature about the arms race to stay ahead of the forgers.
Where do you start when trying to spot a fake image?
One simple but powerful technique is reverse image search. You give the image to a site such as Google Image Search or TinEye, and they show you all other instances of it. A project at Columbia University, in New York City, is taking this to the next level, and starting to find parts of images that have been repurposed from other images.
“I’ve seen the technology get good enough that I’m now very concerned”
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