The company behind Photoshop has revealed a new tool which can undo the software’s photo manipulation tools.
Adobe, which releases the popular software, has developed a method for identifying the changes made to an image using its own existing tools.
Its ‘liquify’ tool, which allows facial features and body parts to be stretched and resized, is the first tool that Adobe is working to reverse-engineer.
The company said in a blog post that while it is proud of the tools it has produced, it is aware of the broader implications of image manipulation.
“While we are proud of the impact that Photoshop and Adobe’s other creative tools have made on the world, we also recognize the ethical implications of our technology,” Adobe wrote in a blog post.
Its researches used deep learning and AI to recognised when images had been altered and created system which was able to identify the with up to a 99 per cent accuracy – far higher than the ability of humans to do the same.
The team then used this identification system to revert the images back to their original position.
“It might sound impossible because there are so many variations of facial geometry possible,” said Professor Alexei A. Efros of UC Berkeley.
“But, in this case, because deep learning can look at a combination of low-level image data, such as warping artifacts, as well as higher level cues such as layout, it seems to work.”
Researchers believe that they will need more time before the tool will be available to customers, but Adobe researcher Richard Zhang said he was looking forward to further exploring the implications of the research.
“We live in a world where it’s becoming harder to trust the digital information we consume,” he said.