OpenOrigins app aims to prove photos real amid deepfakes

OpenOrigins has launched a consumer app that creates a cryptographic record at the moment a photo or video is captured, positioning it as a way to verify real-world footage as deepfakes and AI-generated imagery rise.

The app, OpenOrigins Source, is available free on Apple's App Store and Google Play. It aims to let people prove that an image or video came from a physical device in real time, rather than relying on post-publication analysis.

Synthetic media is a growing problem for social platforms, newsrooms and online marketplaces. AI systems can produce realistic images and video at speed, increasing concerns about misinformation, impersonation and fraud. Many current countermeasures rely on detection tools that assess whether content shows signs of manipulation.

Provenance approach

OpenOrigins is taking a provenance-based approach, arguing that most existing cameras and camera apps do not provide a definitive way to prove content is authentic at the point of capture. OpenOrigins Source records evidence when the user takes a photo or video through the app.

Instead of trying to spot fakes after they spread, the app focuses on building an audit trail from the moment content is created. It generates a unique authenticity record for each capture and links it to a tamper-evident record.

Users can share that record via a link or QR code. OpenOrigins also offers a public verification portal where third parties can check the content's integrity and see whether it was modified after capture.

OpenOrigins says the app uses signals from a phone's hardware to establish that a human captured the content with a physical device. It did not detail the specific mechanisms in its launch materials, but positioned the approach as distinct from tools that look for synthetic patterns in media files.

"Seeing is no longer believing," said Ari Abelson, co-founder of OpenOrigins. "We need to change our process so we're not relying on solutions to catch fakes after they spread. With OpenOrigins Source, you can stop guessing whether a photo or video is real; you prove it from the moment of creation. That's a fundamentally different promise, and it's the only durable solution to the deepfake problem. For users, it's just like taking a photo or video with your default iPhone camera - but with verifiable evidence you actually took it."

Target users

OpenOrigins is pitching the app to a broad user base. It highlighted user-generated content journalists, online sellers and creators as groups that may want a way to show that media is original and unaltered. For online selling, it linked the concept to proving the condition of goods through verified images or video.

For creators, it framed the verification record as a way to protect intellectual property and strengthen claims over original work. In news and current affairs, it pointed to the need for a verifiable chain of custody for imagery shared through social media and messaging apps.

OpenOrigins says its underlying technology is already used by media organisations including ITN, ANI and TopFoto, suggesting it aims to bridge consumer capture tools with professional requirements for provenance and archiving.

Previous deployments

OpenOrigins linked the consumer launch to earlier deployments in what it called high-stakes environments. It said it provided tools to citizen journalists in Zimbabwe to monitor election rallies and polling stations, validating more than 8,000 images and videos.

The company described this work as part of its effort to secure digital footprints and provide verifiable records showing whether content has been altered after capture. OpenOrigins is based in Delaware and focuses on cryptographic provenance and decentralised technology for media authentication.

Dr. Manny Ahmed, founder and CEO, said the firm sees the problem as a collapse of assumptions that have shaped online publishing for decades.

"The internet has always assumed that what is shown roughly corresponds with reality. AI has broken that assumption. For the first time in history, synthetic content is being created faster than any human system can filter, and it is arriving through the same channels we rely on to understand the world. OpenOrigins Source is our answer to that problem. It is beyond a detector or filter; this is a provenance layer at the source, ensuring human content is proven, not guessed," Ahmed said.

What comes next

The launch places OpenOrigins in a fast-developing market for authenticity tools, from watermarking and labelling to device-side signing and verification services. The next challenge will be distribution and adoption: provenance tools only deliver broad value when creators, platforms and viewers know to look for verification records and use them consistently.

OpenOrigins says OpenOrigins Source includes instant cryptographic anchoring, tamper-evident records, a public verification portal and sharing features designed for use across social media and news platforms.