The field of digital forensics involves tracing a media artifact’s point of origin and path of circulation. It also aims to devise ways to detect and assess different forms of tampering. A variety of tools have been created by private companies, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations to aid in these endeavors. For example, Sensity’s “deepfake detection” platform, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (DARPA) MediFor program, Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative, TinEye’s image recognition software, and Amnesty International’s YouTube Data Viewer.

These tools can be helpful to professional journalists aiming to verify images and videos that they encounter, as well as authenticate the media that they create using watermarks and invisible signatures.