Towards an Internet of Trust

AI is becoming more and more important in our everyday lives.
It is just now that we even begin to realize its true potential.
Through projects like ChatGPT, Midjourney or the open Stable Diffusion, suddenly everyone can create impressively convincing images just by writing a simple statement.
This is great, as it enables everyone to create content previously only achieved by teams.
However, it also amplifies a problem the internet is already very familiar with: identity theft.

Take a look at the following two images:

Both share the same distinct style, both look (roughly) like they were made by Vincent van Gogh. However, both of these images were created using generative AI.

The same is true for text - in the not-so-distant future most likely for video as well. This raises one essential question: How can we differentiate between "real" and "fake" content. Turns out that while it’s seemingly impossible to prevent people from lying, we can prevent people from impersonating others.

Let’s now take a closer look at digital signatures and how they help us in this case.

Suppose Bob has a letter he wants to share with Alice. Alice however wants to be sure that this letter was not modified by anyone else. Therefore, Bob decides to digitally sign his letter.

1. He takes his letter and reduces it to a single number that uniquely represents this letter (we call this „creating a hash“)
2. Through another mathematical process this hash is combined with a number only Bob knows (we call this number a „private key“)
3. This creates a digital signature. Bob appends this signature to his letter.

Alice can then compare the letter and the appended signature using yet another mathematical process. If this process succeeds, the signature is valid meaning that the letter was not modified. If this process fails, the signature is invalid - This means that someone other than Bob modified the letter.

As long as the private key remains a secret, no one can generate a signature in Bob’s name.

With this knowledge, we can now almost completely prevent identity theft: We will never know whether Bob actually wrote the letter himself (or was assisted by AI or even his mum). But we will know not to trust letters with invalid signatures, as they most likely come from imposters.

This process is used in many places to ensure safe communication, user generated content is however largely left untouched.
(Here comes some shameless self-advertisement)
Using the Nugget App however, we can almost effortlessly apply said principles to any user generated content. The Nugget App takes care of securely storing the private key and signing text and (soon) possibly any file. This way you can sign almost everything with just the tap of a button.

Click here to learn more about the Nugget Network.