This page is broken into four sections: (1) company, (2) watermarks, (3) authentication, and (4) product & plans. Please scroll down or CTRL+F as appropriate.
Trufo
What is Trufo?
Trufo introduces the capability to apply a high-quality watermark onto audiovisual content. This watermark is secured with cryptography and carries useful information that stays with the digital media. We hope that this will provide an effective means to verify camera-captured content, protect human-designed content, and detect AI-generated content.
Why did you create Trufo?
We created Trufo to address the growing problem of digital authenticity. As the technology behind AI continues to advance and the Internet becomes further integrated into our lives, the need for an ability to distinguish what is generated from what is genuine, through maintaining robust data provenance trails, grows increasingly urgent. Unfortunately, existing solutions are not yet up for the task.
Trufo provides a compelling solution. Through research, we have combined modern cryptography and modern steganography to create a suite of secure watermarks. Through development, we have integrated them in a cloud ecosystem that takes full advantage of modern digital infrastructure. The result is a trust platform that works.
How do I use Trufo?
The steps are simple. (1) Create a Trufo account. (2) Upload digital content. (3) Add data annotations. (4) Choose a watermark. (5) Share the encoded content, which can be decoded at trufo.ai/verify.
Why use Trufo?
Trufo’s basic platform is both free and fast, so using it is convenient and effective. Trufo also provides a number of innovative features, both on the UX side and on the deep technology side. One such feature, for example, is fuzzy authentication, which enables the effective verification of distributed (i.e. modified in some way) digital media. We have also put a lot of thought into making the Trufo platform scalable and forward-compatible, which means that you can start using it now and be confident that it will continue to work.
As a content creator or publisher, what does Trufo do for me?
When your content is consumed, downstream viewers will see: (1) that the watermark source is you (a Trufo account, potentially linked with verified socials and verified devices); (2) the data annotations you added (for example, a Creative Commons license, ora link to your website); and (3) how faithful the version they see is to the original. This gives you control over how your content is consumed, and thus help you safeguard both your digital assets and your content reputation.
Watermarks
What can I watermark?
Currently, Trufo only supports images, and there is a size cap at 4K+.
We are working on adding video support! If you are interested in joining the effort, feel free to reach out to us at careers@trufo.ai.
How much does it cost to watermark?
Each user gets refilled up to 30 credits every month, and each image encoding costs 1 credit. Once the closed beta is over, we will also release higher (paid) tiers.
For now, if you would like to encode more images, please reach out to us at partner@trufo.ai!
What are the different watermarking options?
There are three main types: invisible, visible, metadata; these types can be combined. The invisible watermark comes in three strengths: light, medium, heavy. The visible watermark adds a translucent checkered pattern to the image. The metadata watermark writes information to the file metadata.
You can preview what the watermarks will look like on the app. Using this preview functionality will not consume any credits you have, but these previews will yield no information when decoded.
How fast is the watermarking process?
For a standard HD image, the encoding process takes around 50ms for most watermarks, around 500ms for the invisible-heavy watermark, and upwards of a few seconds for 4K+ images. The decoding process usually takes around 10ms/100ms for detection, on hits/misses, and up to a second for optional analysis.
Note that these times are benchmarked on a PC from 2016, and there are many optimizations, on both the hardware and software sides, that we would like to do.
How robust are the watermarks?
The invisible-light watermark will survive file format changes that do not change the resolution. The invisible-medium watermark is robust against JPEG compression, 90-degree rotation, and either resizing or cropping. The invisible-heavy watermark is in addition robust against arbitrary rotations plus resizing and cropping. All three are also robust against most content alterations, such as applying color filters and adding text captions; these content alterations will still be detected though!
The patterned watermark should work well as long as a substantial portion of the pattern is still clearly visible along one of the sides. The metadata watermark, like other metadata solutions, will work provided the metadata is not removed or modified.
Unlike Trufo’s more cryptographic components, robustness is not a 100% guarantee! Most extreme content alterations, along with certain edge cases and unforeseen bugs, may be too much for the watermark.
Do you store the images I watermark?
We do not store any images, though we do store some hashes along with digital signatures. These hashes are very small in comparison to the raw images. This is to ensure that privacy is respected.
We do plan on adding the option of storing the original copy for easy reference as a premium feature in the future.
Can I watermark an already-watermarked image?
Currently, this is not allowed, so that those who see a derivative copy of the watermarked content cannot overwrite the data.
Trufo does intend to support multiple-watermarking in the future, in a way that respects any detectable provenance trails, using new blockchain-esque technology.
Authentication
What does it mean to “authenticate” digital media?
Authentication in this context comes down to two things: who (or what) marked the content, and if (and how) the content was changed since marking.
There are three clear weaknesses here: (1) Do you trust the source? (2) Is the mark robust? (3) Is the mark secure? A protocol is only as strong as its weakest link, so all three need to be addressed in a balanced fashion.
With Trufo, when the watermark is encoded, the watermarking entity (camera, account, etc.) adds a digital signature that certifies their identity, and when the watermark is decoded, any changes that have occurred can be detected (cryptographic check) and described (differential analysis).
What is fuzzy authentication and how does it work?
Standard cryptography-based authentications (e.g. digital signatures) can only verify marked content if it is completely unchanged. There are ways of adding more flexibility, but they are very easily broken by mundane image distribution operations such as JPEG compression, file format changing, and metadata removal.
Fuzzy authentication is a new method of reliably verifying moderately altered content. In contrast to the well-established fuzzy methods in biometrics, where moderately altered keys can still be accepted (e.g. face ID with a mask), Trufo’s fuzzy methods allow moderately altered messages to be validated (e.g. edited images).
An important step is the use of differential hash analysis, which involves the construction and analysis of a new type of hash. The result is that small changes can be not just detected, but also described in a human-intelligible manner, without the need to store a copy of the original content.
If you would like to conduct some red-teaming or cryptanalysis, feel free to contact our resident cryptographer!
How can I show people that my images were captured by a camera?
Currently, you can only add in an unverified “camera-captured” origination claim. We are working on integrations with camera devices (e.g. phones) so that we can provide more secure origination claims.
What prevents a bad actor from lying about their watermarked content?
Nothing really — and this is a problem all authentication platforms face. Trufo addresses this by drawing from social networks: all watermarked content is traced to a registered source that lives in a ecosystem Trufo maintains. Certain sources, such as verified public figures or verified physical devices, naturally carry more weight than others.
Product & Plans
Will Trufo continue to be free?
We believe in keeping the core platform free (and eventually open-source to the extent that we can). This includes unlimited decoding for the public along with a set number of 30 encodings per user per month.
As new features are developed, many of the more business-oriented or workflow-oriented functionalities will be premium.
Who can use Trufo right now?
Trufo is currently in closed beta testing, which means you will need an access code in order to create a Trufo account. We are planning for a full public release soon though!
Why is Trufo free?
There are three main reasons Trufo’s core platform is free:
(1) Our core technology is efficient enough, in both watermarking speed and cloud storage size, to scale quite well.
(2) There is a whole lot more to be built in the space, so there are plenty of monetization opportunities elsewhere.
(3) We believe that these core tools should be made accessible to the public, because of how important digital trust is.
Does Trufo plan to offer products aside from the current web app?
Yes, and we are working on a number of new products and services that will make both encoding and decoding more convenient.
