RealityFoundation
Research for a verifiable world
We study the boundaries between authentic and synthetic media — and build the academic infrastructure to defend them. Our work underpins the tools, policies, and standards needed to restore trust in visual evidence.
Why this work matters
The proliferation of generative AI has made it trivially easy to fabricate images, documents, and video. Legal systems, journalism, and democratic processes depend on the integrity of evidence — a dependency that is now under attack.
The Problem
Visual truth is eroding
Deepfakes, synthetic media, and AI-generated imagery are indistinguishable from authentic records. Courts, journalists, and ordinary people have no reliable mechanism to verify what they see.
The Gap
No academic anchor
Industry-led detection tools exist, but they lack independent verification, peer review, and the permanence required for legal or archival use. Independent academic research is missing.
Our Response
Blockchain-anchored provenance
We research cryptographic timestamping, NFT-based provenance records, and immutable ledger architectures as tools to establish unambiguous chains of authenticity.
Long term
Academic validation layer
RealityFoundation will serve as the independent scientific counterpart to RealityCheck — providing peer-reviewed methodology, published datasets, and policy recommendations.
Research themes
Four interlocking areas that together address the challenge of maintaining verifiable reality.
Theme 01
Proof of Reality
Defining what cryptographic and physical evidence constitutes proof that a digital asset was captured, not generated.
Theme 02
NFT Timestamping
Evaluating blockchain-based timestamp mechanisms for evidentiary integrity across legal and journalistic contexts.
Theme 03
Insurance Fraud Detection
Studying how manipulated imagery enters insurance claims processes and how provenance records can prevent it.
Theme 04
Deepfake Forensics
Developing open methodologies for detecting and attributing synthetic media at a forensic standard of rigor.
European Context
Built for the European regulatory moment
The EU AI Act, the Digital Services Act, and the forthcoming Media Authenticity Regulation are creating binding obligations around synthetic media transparency. RealityFoundation is positioned to provide the independent academic grounding these frameworks require — from methodology to evidence standards.
EU AI Act
Requires watermarking of AI-generated content. Our research informs verification methodology.
Digital Services Act
Mandates risk assessments for synthetic media on platforms. We provide independent benchmarks.
C2PA & Content Provenance
We study interoperability between blockchain records and emerging open standards like C2PA and IPTC.
Get Involved
Researchers, policymakers, journalists
We are building a multidisciplinary research community. There is a role for every background.