Digital Content Provenance: Path to Tran

The rapid proliferation of Generative AI is spurring creativity and changing industries but also fueling deception and fraud and fundamentally altering the global informational ecosystem. Global governments, multi-lateral institutions, and technologists around the globe are looking for ways to maintain fidelity in the brave new synthetic world.

This course will delve into one of the most promising approaches to mitigating risks: digital content provenance. An emerging open standard, which emphasizes transparency and authenticity in what we see and hear online, is backed by nearly 2,000 companies and has been embraced by global governments – most notably by the White House’s Executive Order on AI (October 2023). We will examine why the world needs provenance in digital content, how it works (What is a PKI? What is a certificate authority? Why is an open standard necessary?), how it is deployed (what are the technologies available) and how various industries from government, media, Gen AI, and are already using provenance to increase fidelity and trust in what we see and hear online. We will also examine its pathways to being legislated and assess if this will become the law of States, Nations, and even Internationally recognized standard.

We will include guest speakers from government, technology, technology, and private industry to help explain why/how digital content provenance is essential for society and the economy.

Students interested in the nexus of technology, Gen AI, policy development, and global security will be interested in this course. This course will give students a solid understanding of the theories and pillars of digital content provenance and the opportunity to use and test the emerging technologies associated.