4 Tools to Find Out if the Videos and Photos You Find Online Are Real or Fake
The way we consume information has changed dramatically in recent years, especially thanks to the advent of artificial intelligence and the proliferation of social media platforms. With this, the way we communicate has also changed.
According to this year’s Reuters Institute report, nearly a third of respondents say they get their information from YouTube, followed by WhatsApp and TikTok. In this sense, knowing whether a video or image is authentic is vital to avoid being deceived.
Beyond organizations dedicated exclusively to fact-checking or reverse image search on Google—perhaps the most famous search engine—there are very interesting public and private initiatives.
Here are the basic tools if you want to verify an image or video:
-Geo Search Tool
This tool allows you to perform a geographic search to check if an event actually happened somewhere. Although it has a major drawback, as it can show the geographic location of the video uploaded to the website, not the location of its recording.
-Diffchecker
You may find an image on a social network that you think is not the original and has been retouched and modified, either because it is a meme and you want to search for the original image or because you suspect that the image is related to some supposed facts.
Diffchecker is really easy to use: all you have to do is add the images you want to check, and it will show you all the changes made to them.
Additionally, it also allows you to compare other types of files, such as text files, in case you want to perform the same search on this type of document.
- InVid Verification Plugin
InVID is described as a “Swiss Army knife” for verifying the authenticity of images and videos circulating on social media. If you want to avoid falling victim to fake news, we tell you how to use InVID to verify misleading images and videos.
Once you have InVID installed in your browser, every time you visit a website that has a video or image that you want to check, you have to press the plugin button located on the right side of the address bar, and it gives you information about it.
- FotoForensics
This database will allow you to search using an image or its web address and find out if it is original or fake.
Personally, FotoForensics is one of the tools I like the most because the interface is very easy to use, plus it gives recommendations so you don't leak your private data.
According to the site's developers, many people have uploaded their official identity documents to the search, which they are constantly deleting and issuing a warning about.