It’s August, which means class is (almost) in session, and today’s subject is AI misinformation. It seems like a futuristic concern, but it’s now a very real daily challenge. Artificial intelligence no longer hides in the background of smart assistants and chatbots. It creates synthetic faces, mimics voices, and stitches together video content that looks almost indistinguishable from reality. Ideally, this technology would be limited to altering the world of entertainment. However, AI-generated images, video clips, and audio present challenges for security teams across industries, changing how we perceive the truth.
AI Isn’t Just Smart, It’s Crafty
We used to worry about blurry footage and missing angles. Now we’re dealing with something entirely different — footage that looks like the real deal, but was digitally altered by artificial intelligence. As AI-generated media continues to flood the internet, much of what we see can no longer be trusted at face value.
Generative tools can mimic faces, voices, and even entire environments. They can place people where they never were. They can create video proof of events that never happened. That’s not science fiction — it’s already happening. A deepfake of former Fidelity fund manager Anthony Bolton recently made the rounds, complete with convincing visuals and audio, promoting financial scams. He wasn’t the first, and as AI capabilities improve, he won’t be the last.
These AI-powered illusions don’t just cause confusion; they chip away at public trust. If fake content can look this convincing, then what separates truth from forgery?
Why Security Teams Should Care
This isn’t just a media problem. It’s a real threat to physical security operations. Security teams rely on video and image data for documentation, investigation, and response. That footage needs to be trustworthy. When an incident occurs — say, a break-in or a fight — the first step is to review the video. But if anyone can alter footage after the fact using AI, or worse, generate it from scratch, the entire process breaks down.
Courts, insurance companies, and law enforcement agencies expect video to tell the truth. But AI has made it harder to prove that what the camera saw is what actually happened. The stakes aren’t hypothetical. If a piece of fake footage can cast doubt, it can unravel an entire investigation.
So what’s the solution? It doesn’t lie in smarter cameras. It lies in smarter verification.
Blockchain: The Digital Truth Detector
Enter blockchain. Not just a buzzword attached to online technology trends, but the technology that can quietly verify the digital makeup of video security content. SWEAR uses blockchain technology to authenticate video at the moment it’s captured, mapping a permanent cryptographic fingerprint and future-proofing content from AI manipulation.
This fingerprint can’t be swapped out or altered. Every clip, image, and file receives a timestamp and a unique identifier that proves its authenticity. If someone tampers with a copy later, the original still stands, and security teams can see what’s been changed. That distinction becomes the difference between a trustworthy report and a questionable one.
Blockchain doesn’t stop AI in its tracks or erase the threat of deepfakes, but it gives security teams the power to stand behind their footage with confidence, no matter how convincing the forgeries get. It’s not about outrunning fake content. It’s about refusing to let it rewrite the story.
By recording and verifying content the moment it’s created, organizations draw a clear line between fact and fiction. That kind of proof isn’t just helpful — it’s necessary. In physical security, video evidence often drives decisions, policies, and legal action. There’s no room for doubt.
Truth needs to stand on solid ground, especially when technology tries to blur the edges. Blockchain gives that ground a foundation. And in an era where seeing is no longer believing, that might be the most important lesson of all.