The Deepfake Summit

Today is Friday, July 19. Here are five things in #digitalidentity that I found interesting this week 1/ Incognia and FREENOW Announce Strategic Partnership Incognia announced a new partnership with FREENOW, a European multi-mobility super app This partnership is Incognia's debut in Europe and expands its footprint to nearly 190 countries worldwide Congrats André F., John Lindner, and the entire Incognia team More details in their press release, link below ?? 2/ Prove releases developer self-service platform and new SDK "Through orchestrated APIs and real-time Key Management, the Prove developer self-service platform offers identity protection in every transaction." In their press release, Prove also announced two new executive hires: Catherine Porter joined as Chief Business Officer and Eric Lesser joined as Chief Financial Officer 3/ TechCrunch: Deepfake-detecting firm Pindrop lands $100M loan to grow its offerings Pindrop’s Co-founder & CEO Vijay Balasubramaniyan announced a $100M, five-year loan from Hercules Capital that "will enable Pindrop to further develop its cutting-edge audio, voice, and AI technologies, enhancing its offerings for customers" 4/ authID and FinClusive Partner to Integrate Next-Gen Biometric and Financial Crimes Compliance Solutions "Under this agreement, authID's biometric services will be integrated into FinClusive's Compliance-as-a-Service (CaaS) platform to help combat the rapidly escalating threat of financial crimes, identity fraud, malicious, AI-driven deepfakes and other illicit finance, fraud, and related vulnerabilities." 5/ Observer Research Foundation: Deepfakes and potential implications for online identity verification This last interesting item is an essay written by Anulekha Nandi covering the potential for #deepfakes to undermine trust in online identity verification processes *** LINKS INCOGNIA: https://lnkd.in/eckZYRwS PROVE: https://lnkd.in/eUqkikJe TECHCRUNCH: https://lnkd.in/ek3pJ44Z PINDROP: https://lnkd.in/eTFiipB6 AUTHID: https://lnkd.in/eF_E5TRF OSF: https://lnkd.in/eZAsDWWE

As 'digital identity' becomes an increasingly used (and misunderstood) concept, I have two suggestions for helping to clarify what it means: ?? Identity vs ID Identity is core to a person (human or organisation), cannot be taken away and has many different facets. ID (as in 'ID evidence') is an artefact or attribute that is connected to your 'identity', but isn't your identity (I am not the same thing as my passport). You can lose your ID and get another one. An ID is also limited in scope (travel, driving etc.), so doesn't give away your whole life story when you present it. Sharing my 'identity' is something that I might do with my therapist, but when getting on a plane I just need to share my 'ID'. As has already happened in Australia, shifting from using 'digital identity' to 'digital ID' in the context of sharing ID evidence will I think help to clarify what is being used. ?? ID evidence vs channel There are only three combinations of ID evidence and channel that I can think of: a) Face to face checking of document ID evidence and matching to a person b) Remote checking of document ID evidence and matching to a person c) Remote checking of digital ID evidence and matching to a person The traditional way to check ID was always a), go into a bank branch, show your paper/plastic 'document ID' to the trained person, who would validate the paper and check the photo (if there was one) matched your face. Lots of insecure processes involved, but that was the old days when crime wasn't so prevalent. Remote checking of document ID (b) has become popular for onboarding, using an app to scan a document and take a selfie that is then matched to meet a probability bar that it is a real person/the right person. This is often called 'digital identity', but is actually a 'digitised ID' - there is no digital ID involved (unless one is created after the process). And with the rise of genAI, the creation of perfect fake documents and faces means that image-based ID checking is doomed over time. Let's stop calling this 'digital identity', as it just isn't - it's a document ID captured remotely over a digital channel. Many countries have already adopted the more secure process of using c), a 'digital ID' - electronic evidence and data that proves who you are/entitlements to something, that is issued via a secure process, and protected by secure 'authenticators' to keep it within your control (usually some form of biometric check). Solutions in this space make everyone's life simpler and safer. The EU and many others already have these approaches - if the UK aspires to be a 'tech superpower', we need to keep up! Ps digital ID presented F2F - I include this in c), as unless your eyes can read QR codes, or brain can check digital certificates, the same tech is being used F2F as is used remotely #digitalID #digitalidentity