Apple introduced yesterday Apple Reference Image : a way to cryptographically prove a photo was actually taken by a camera, instead of AI generated. During my time at the Recurse Center this summer, Alex Hornstein and I (two camera lovers) built a camera with proof of capture . The camera: a Raspberry Pi Zero, a display board, an ATECC608 crypto chip, a shutter button, and a 3D-printed enclosure. Prove what’s real at capture time Back in 2019 I was deploying ML fact-checking tools, and even in the Will-Smith-eating-spaghetti era it was obvious that generators outrun detectors . Detection is a losing race: every improvement in the detector is training signal for the next generator. Our approach flips the problem: instead of trying to detect what's fake after the fact, prove what's real at the moment of capture .…