An Introduction to the JPEG Fake Media Initiative

Recent advances in media creation and modification allow to produce near realistic media assets that are almost indistinguishable from original assets to the human eye. These developments open opportunities for creative production of new media in the entertainment and art industry. However, the intentional or unintentional spread of manipulated media, i.e., modified media with the intention to induce misinterpretation, also imposes risks such as social unrest, spread of rumours for political gain or encouraging hate crimes. The clear and transparent annotation of media modifications is considered to be a crucial element in many usage scenarios bringing trust to the users. This has already triggered various organizations to develop mechanisms that can detect and annotate modified media assets when they are shared. However, these annotations should be attached to the media in a secure way to prevent them of being compromised. In addition, to achieve a wide adoption of such an annotation ecosystem, interoperability is essential and this clearly calls for a standard. This paper presents an initiative by the JPEG Committee called JPEG Fake Media. The scope of JPEG Fake Media is the creation of a standard that can facilitate the secure and reliable annotation of media asset creation and modifications. The standard shall support usage scenarios that are in good faith as well as those with malicious intent. This paper gives an overview of the current state of this initiative and introduces already identified use cases and requirements.