AI challenges will ‘increase dramatically’ this year, says cryptogaming exec

Artificial intelligence and its connection to blockchain technology were hot topics at the annual Van Eyck Blockchain Conference in Los Angeles. For Tom Bilyeu—creator of the Project Kyzen 3D modeling and gaming platform—authentication is the perfect first use case, especially in the face of AI-generated deep illusions.

“I think [AI deepfakes] In the year As we march into the elections in 2024, they're going to increase dramatically — I don't think people understand how hard it's going to be,” Bilyeu told Decrypt, which recently impersonated Michael Saylor, a deep-fake AI-generated micro-strategist. “It's going to be really important to have some kind of AI-based watermarking or put these things on the blockchain so you can have proof of authenticity.”

The threat of deep fakes generated by AI has grown to the point where the Biden administration announced in February plans to tag authentic content with digital watermarks and encrypted images to fight fake news.

Billew, a Web3 game developer and security entrepreneur, founded Impact Theory in 2016 after selling Impact Theory for $1 billion with his wife, Lisa. Impact Theory's YouTube channel boasts over 4 million subscribers.

Impact Theory sold “Founders Keys” NFT in December 2021 as a way to raise money for a stake in the company. The company was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last August, paying a $6 million fine with the regulatory agency and burning the keys.

Meanwhile, Bleu introduced Project Kizen, a 3D world with evolving game features and digital avatars. The project team includes former executives from Riot Games, Disney and Bank of America.

Since the launch of OpenAI's GPT-4 last year, developers of generative AI models have been dogged by allegations of plagiarism and copyright infringement.

The New York Times sued OpenAI for copyright infringement in December, saying the publication's articles were used to train millions of AI models without permission. In January, OpenAI pushed back against the Times' claims, saying the news outlet created the IO's desire to produce the most damning evidence possible.

Verifying who created the information and tracking where it was will be helpful in such a dispute, said Mr. Balai.

“For that purpose, I thought blockchain could be adopted very quickly,” he said. But I think people are caught off guard by how fast AI is moving.

He said the patent application of blockchain technology as a digital ledger is a big advantage.

“Of course you can take something in the virtual world – in the same way you can take something as proof of identity – if you have a rights management system that plugs into the blockchain, you can do proof of copyright ownership,” he said. “In the long run, I think this will be incredibly beneficial.”

Billu also proposes de-risking the use of blockchain to allow digital assets to hold value and bridge the gap between physical and virtual realms.

“You know exactly how much stuff there is, where it is and who has it,” he said.