Verifying video and photo footage in enterprise workflow.
We’ve never been more equipped to take video and photo footage. Every smartphone has a camera, and most people have a smartphone. That’s a lot of digital images and video footage being taken every day – around 1.4 trillion images per annum according to Keypoint Intelligence.
But how do we know if a photo or video used in an insurance claim for example, is real and hasn’t been tampered with? How can we be sure that Mrs Jones hasn’t taken a photo she’s found online of a leaking washing machine and sent it to her insurance company as part of her claim? Images can be easily altered – the metadata changed, photoshopped, a video clip shortened or stolen from another online source - all to suit a cause.
At a time when digital communication is driving the way we work, the importance of trusting what we see is vital for many businesses and industries. The use of media is growing across all sectors – manufacturing and food production, healthcare, insurance – and being embedded in increasing parts of daily life – dashcams, drones, TV’s and even doorbells. So, how can we be certain that it’s digitally accurate in the midst of complex human and robotic manipulation, or deep fakes?
Artificial intelligence is fuelling the deep fake phenomenon. Most of us remember the footage of Barack Obama that had been manipulated using AI to precisely model how Mr Obama moves his mouth when he speaks allowing others to put words in it – quite literally – and deliver speeches he hadn’t actually made. The AI deep fake phenomenon has repercussions for business too, not just for former presidents.
The importance of certifying the media from source so that it can be trusted is growing in importance as our digital world evolves at pace, especially for businesses that embed footage into their enterprise workflow. There is a core difference between what is certified and what is circumstantial, and it’s increasingly vital that the difference between the two are acknowledged to prevent fraud on an enormous scale.
The insurance industry uses growing amounts of visual media to certify claims, check the repair of buildings, cars and machinery and to establish any damage caused through video footage taken ‘in the field’. The industry has also embraced the use of apps to help manage claims, to speed up the processes and make the user experience more friendly. But these apps have no way of certifying the media within them and in turn opens up the risk of relying upon videos and photos that have been tampered with, exposing them to fraud.
Mrs Jones’ claiming for one washing machine seems trivial when compared with a rental car company that has thousands of cars - and potentially many thousands of pounds in claims. The potential for fraud is huge and offers an opportunity to organised crime who know that it’s increasingly difficult with deep-fake AI systems and human intervention, for insurance companies to prove that what they’re looking at is real.
Working with eviid, insurance companies have been able to introduce a verified video element to insurance company claims - and has seen, that where claims are of a value of less than £2,000, a shocking 40% of claimants have walked away from completing the claim at all.
Through the capture, verification, upload and storage of video and photos within the eviid media platform – video and photo content are certified, and insurance companies can be sure that what they’re seeing within their enterprise workflow is real. The risk of fraud is reduced, and the enterprise workflow allows an efficient claims cycle – a win for everyone.