2024 prediction: the impending demise of digital trust - deepfakes and the year 2024
Gone are the days when people could trust what they saw and heard. Given our reliance on digital records within our legal, security and digital systems, the proliferation of deepfakes will undermine digital trust. Soon all forms of digital records will be built upon the only unimpeachable form of encryption: PKI.
The reliability of the digital record will face its downfall in 2024. The culprit? Deepfakes — a sophisticated form of digital manipulation that seamlessly blends real and fabricated content, eroding the foundation of trust in what we see and hear. This alarming trend has far-reaching implications, particularly in digital, security, and legal systems where authenticity is paramount.
The erosion of digital trust
The ubiquitous nature of deepfakes raises a pressing concern: the erosion of digital trust. The days of accepting digital records at face value are fading, as the line between reality and fabrication becomes increasingly blurred. This phenomenon has the potential to compromise the very fabric of our society, where trust in digital evidence is fundamental to national security, legal proceedings, and a myriad of digital authentication systems.
In the current landscape, our reliance on digital records has never been more pronounced. The integrity of digital information underpins critical aspects of our modern world, as well as everyday aspects of life. As deepfakes become more sophisticated and accessible, the authenticity of any digital record — be it a photograph, video, or voice recording — comes under scrutiny.
One of the imminent threats lies in the vulnerability of biometric systems that authenticate identity based on digital records. Fraud attacks rose 92 per cent last year, and with deepfakes infiltrating our digital systems, the very foundations of security crumble. Imagine a world where facial recognition, voice authentication, and fingerprint scanning no longer guarantee the trustworthiness of an individual's identity. The implications for personal privacy, financial security, and even national security are profound.
Safeguarding authenticity
To address this impending crisis, a potential solution lies in the integration of encrypted timestamps as a built-in feature in all recording devices. These timestamps would serve as digital watermarks, attesting to the authenticity of the content at the time of capture. However, the success of this countermeasure relies on the implementation of a foolproof encryption method, and here Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) emerges as the source of trust in the digital realm.
PKI, with its foundation in asymmetric cryptography, is renowned for its robust security features. By utilizing PKI to create encrypted watermarks, we can unimpeachably establish the authenticity of recorded content. This cryptographic safeguard ensures that the content is timestamped in a way that cannot be manipulated or forged, providing a reliable method to distinguish genuine records from their deepfake counterparts.
Digital trust rebuilt
Integration of PKI-based encrypted timestamps into digital document creation and distribution can address the root cause of the issue by reinforcing the veracity of digital records. When one day every photograph, video, or voice recording carries an indelible mark of authenticity, the foundation of trust can be rebuilt. This innovation not only safeguards biometric authentication systems but also bolsters the reliability of digital evidence in legal proceedings.
The implementation of such a solution will require concerted effort from technology developers, legislators, and the wider public. Any solution will need to strike the right balance between privacy and security. As we approach 2024, society’s need for this kind of digital record signing – and the hardware, software, and ecosystem necessary to support it – has become keenly apparent.
Next year will be a crossroads — a juncture where the reliability of the digital record faces its demise, but also a moment where innovative solutions, rooted in robust encryption like PKI, can salvage and fortify our digital trust. The path we choose will shape the future of our digital landscape, determining whether we succumb to the threats of deepfakes or emerge with a renewed sense of trust in the authenticity of our digital world.
Throughout December we're looking into the trends and predictions for 2024. Read up about our previous prediction for 2024.