Late last month, Hany Farid, a professor at the School of Information, unveiled his newest venture: GetReal Labs. The company is a joint effort between Farid, a trusted authority on synthetic media detection, and venture capital firm Ballistic Ventures, which specializes in funding innovations in cybersecurity.
GetReal Labs’s mission is to be the world’s leading authority on malicious synthetic content and deepfake detection, offering advanced solutions to authenticate content and combat deception. Farid and the rest of the team, which includes several School of Information alums, have developed a toolkit to analyze pictures, videos, and audio for signs of manipulation or AI-generation, as well as detecting in real-time if a video or voice call is fake and malicious. For example, the software will analyze shadows to determine if they are physically consistent with the scene, as well as analyze the perspective geometry of a scene to determine if it is physically plausible. They hope this suite of tools will help organizations such as financial institutions, media institutions, and government agencies protect themselves from malicious digital content.
“We focus on deploying forensic techniques that afford explainable and interpretable results so that analysts can understand why we classify content as authentic or not. We have built an incredible team of digital forensic and cybersecurity experts with a deep and broad understanding of how to protect individuals and organizations from cyber threats.”
“Our most significant differentiator is that we are building technologies to authenticate images, audio, and video, both offline and in real-time (e.g., over a video or phone call),” explained Farid. “We focus on deploying forensic techniques that afford explainable and interpretable results so that analysts can understand why we classify content as authentic or not. We have built an incredible team of digital forensic and cybersecurity experts with a deep and broad understanding of how to protect individuals and organizations from cyber threats.”
This announcement comes in the aftermath of a rise in artificial intelligence misuse by bad actors in recent years. Farid has been extensively documenting the use of deepfakes in elections both domestically and internationally, as well as in schools, and revenge pornography.
“The inception of GetReal stems from years of watching AI trends and the democratization of its systems and tools. With a significant amount of all online content soon to be AI-generated, and first-hand accounts of how nefarious actors are exploiting advancements, we’re at the juncture where GetReal is critical,” said Ted Schlein, Co-founder and General Partner of Ballistic Ventures, who also serves as GetReal’s interim CEO, in a press release. “Our mission is to stop these threats with the market’s most advanced technology for authenticating content and detecting deception – and the team we’ve assembled gives me great hope for our future.”
