Is that photo or article someone posted on the internet claiming it came from Fox News actually from Fox News — or is it bogus?
Fox Corp. has created a technical protocol called Verify, designed with two objectives: to let media companies register content and grant usage rights to AI platforms; and to allow consumers to verify the content is authentic. The company is releasing Verify on an open-source basis, in the hopes that others sign on to the blockchain-based content verification system.
On Tuesday, Fox publicly released a beta version of the first Verify application, the Verify Tool, a web-based solution that lets consumers authenticate images and article links they find online purporting to be from Fox sources. The tool is available at verify.fox and information on the Verify protocol is at verifymedia.com.
The effort by Fox News’ parent to confirm the authenticity of its content will strike some as ironic, given evidence that the cable network has repeatedly promoted falsehoods. Last year, Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, which had alleged Fox News repeatedly and knowingly aired false claims about the voting company’s actions and influence on the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Fox faces a second defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic, another voting-technology firm, which is seeking at least $2.7 billion.
Fox Corp. sees the need to protect its intellectual property with the advent of powerful artificial-intelligence technologies. “With the explosion of ChatGPT and OpenAI, we felt this was a moment to introduce a set of controls for how [Fox’s content] is utilized in this space,” said Melody Hildebrandt, Fox Corp.’s chief technology officer.
Fox launched an internal beta version of Verify on Aug. 23, 2023, to coincide with the first GOP candidates’ primary debate on Fox News (pictured above). To date, content from Fox News, Fox Business, Fox Sports and most recently Fox’s television stations have been signed to the Verify content graph, totaling approximately 84,000 pieces of content including both articles and images. Initially, Fox’s focus for the Verify project is on text and images for its digital news and sports content rather than episodic TV shows (like “The Masked Singer” or “MasterChef”).
According to Hildebrandt, Verify establishes the origin and history of original content by cryptographically signing individual pieces of content on the blockchain, which in turn allows the content to be independently verified by consumers as originating from the publisher they expect. The Verify system also establishes a technical bridge between media companies and AI companies’ Large Language Models (LLMs) via a verified access point for content — which, Hildebrandt said, can create new commercial opportunities for content owners through programmatic access conditions.
Verify was developed in-house by the Fox Technology team in collaboration with Polygon Labs, leveraging the latter’s PoS open-source blockchain technology and advanced search technology. Anyone can access the Verify source code in GitHub and modify it (and also publish it back into GitHub), while Fox Corp. will maintain the core codebase.
In addition to authenticating online content, Verify also provides a technical mechanism for AI platforms to license content datasets across multiple publishers to provide training data and real-time news information to widely used LLMs. Fox’s move on this front comes as alleged unauthorized use of copyrighted material to train LLMs has spawned multiple legal fights, including a lawsuit the New York Times filed against OpenAI and Microsoft.
By using the blockchain certification and verification tools, Fox and other media companies are able to protect their content and business models through enforcement of their intellectual property — and mitigate the risk their IP will be used and commercialized by third-party platforms without permission or compensation, according to Hildebrandt.
“We are in the AI-optimist camp,” she said. “We want to participate in this economy… but we also believe that our content should not be commercialized without our participation.”
Fox is targeting a second release of Verify in early 2024 that will migrate from Polygon public blockchain to an application-specific blockchain to reduce the cost to near-zero for signing content, Hildebrandt said. The company said news about plans to adopt Verify by third-party content providers, which are still in development, are expected to follow.
Pictured above (l. to r.): Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy participate in the first debate of the 2024 Republican presidential primary season hosted by Fox News on Aug. 23, 2023, in Milwaukee, Wisc.
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