Adobe builds a tool to spot digitally manipulated photos

Adobe shared a new research project in collaboration with University of California, Berkeley on Friday, revealing a tool that can detect digital manipulation in photographs and videos, The Verge reports.

Designed to spot Photoshop's edits, the research focused on the Liquify tool — used to adjust the shape of faces and alter facial expressions. Because the feature can make changes that are soft and imperceptible, Adobe started a series of tests to detect both drastic and subtle image alterations. Using machine learning, researchers created tool that correctly identified altered images 99 percent of the time, compared to the human eye's 53 percent success rate.

"While we are proud of the impact that Photoshop and Adobe's other creative tools have made on the world, we also recognize the ethical implications of our technology. Fake content is a serious and increasingly pressing issue," the company told The Verge.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Although the research is promising and aims to stop the potentially harmful effects of manipulated media, Adobe has no immediate plans to turn the work into a commercial product, rather, the tech giant is using the project as one of "many efforts across the company to better detect image, video, and audio document manipulation."