IBM’s AI-Enabled Smartphone Scanner Can Detect Counterfeit Goods
An experienced wine connoisseur can probably tell at a glance if that $1,000 bottle is the genuine article, but most of us cannot. A properly trained machine learning algorithm might be able to help with that. IBM has announced the creation of an artificial intelligence program that can look at items and tell you whether or not they are counterfeits. And of course, it’s got blockchain technology built in. Doesn’t everything these days?
Counterfeiting costs the global economy more than $1.2 trillion annually, as consumers pay inflated prices for fake items and businesses lose sales to those same fakes. IBM says its Crypto Anchor Verifier can help authenticate everything from diamonds to food, and the technology can work with a smartphone camera. It is partnering first with the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) to evaluate and grade diamonds using the Crypto Anchor Verifier.
According to IBM, every object has distinctive optical patterns, and AI can be trained to pick up on those patterns to decide whether something is authentic. It’s the sort of thing a well-trained human could do, but it’s harder to have a human expert on call than to just point your phone at something.
IBM started from the perspective of spectrophotometers, which can measure optical properties. However, these are bulky, expensive, and difficult to operate. It crafted an AI that can determine optical properties from a camera image to estimate whether it’s “real.” Of course, it needed all that higher level data to train the neural network to recognize objects based on their color, motion, viscosity, hue saturation, and so on.
This system plugs into a blockchain system, which you’ve probably heard about in reference to cryptocurrency. However, a blockchain is simply a distributed ledger and verified authenticity. In this case, IBM uses a blockchain to record the optical properties of an original item and track it all the way through the supply chain. The blockchain, therefore, confirms the item in question is the real deal and not a fake.
IBM says the Crypto Anchor Verifier can be used to verify a myriad of items including paper currency and medicines. It could also analyze water quality or detect contamination with bacteria like E. coli. Although, your smartphone camera doesn’t quite have the hardware for that. IBM is a little vague on which applications will work with a phone camera, but it seems confident the GIA partnership will result in a scanner anyone can use to verify their precious gems.
Continue reading
China’s Tencent Adds Face Scanning to Monitor Children Gaming
Dozens of mobile games will now use facial recognition to make sure no one underage is playing games too late at night. This is only the start, and Tencent says its "Midnight Patrol" technology is coming to more games soon.
Canon Sued Over Printer That Stops Scanning, Faxing When it Runs Out of Ink
You read that right: functions that don’t technically depend whatsoever on the presence of ink aren’t working without that exact thing.
Apple Might be Ditching its Controversial CSAM Image Scanning Program
Apple had previously said it was only delaying its CSAM image scanning technology so it could gather feedback, but now it appears the company might be scrapping it all together.
Epson FastFoto FF-680W Review: An Awesome High-Speed Photo Scanner
If you've been staring at shoeboxes of old photos dreading how long it will take you to scan them, the Epson FF-680W is a great solution.