Paradigm-backed Succinct launches iPhone camera app that combats AI fakes using cryptography

Succinct Labs has launched an ambitious new app that could help combat the rising threats posed by AI-generated photos and videos.

The company unveiled ZCAM Thursday, an iPhone app that fingerprints photos and video using cryptography, according to a statement.

Succinct said the new app "signs photos and videos at the moment of capture, producing a tamper-proof record that links content to the device that captured it." People are then able to "independently verify" when media came from a "real device" and was not "digitally altered or generated," according to the company.

Other projects like World, which is backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, are also using blockchain technology to try to counter the risks of artificial intelligence. World assigns user IDs to people who prove they are human, a strategy designed to allow for distinguishing AI-powered actors from real people online.

In its statement, Succinct cited research from Deloitte’s Center for Financial Services that predicted generative AI could cause "fraud losses to reach" $40 billion in the United States by 2027, up from $12.3 billion in 2023.

Based on Succinct's research, commercial AI detectors can "easily" fail. The company's approach instead taps device hardware, enabling smartphones to "generate unique cryptographic signatures." With its new app, when someone takes a photo or video using their iPhone, ZCAM generates a cryptographic hash from the captured pixels, Succinct said.

While the app sounds promising, and proving what is real is believed by many to be a better solution than proving what is fake, incentivizing people to actually use the app may be the biggest challenge to scaling user adoption.

The company, however, did tease the benefits of both businesses and journalists using ZCAM.

In 2024, Paradigm led a $55 million financing round in Succinct Labs with participation from the founders of Polygon and EigenLayer, among others.

According to Succinct, its SP1 zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM) secures over $4 billion in digital assets. Last August, the company launched the mainnet for its Succinct Prover Network while activating its native PROVE token.

The Succinct Prover Network offers a decentralized marketplace on Ethereum that enables applications to submit zero-knowledge proof requests, with independent provers competing to verify them.