The Kojo Nnamdi Show

Using "Digital Forensics" to Detect Manipulated Images:

Does the fashion industry promote dangerous ideas of beauty and body images among young people?

For years, women's groups, medical professionals and parents have criticized the advertising and fashion industries for celebrating rail-thin models with flawless skin. In fact, most models can't even live up to those standards: many of the iconic images in magazines and advertisements are digitally manipulated to shave off weight, eliminate wrinkles and slim silhouettes.

Legislators in France, Britain and Norway have proposed legal remedies, including labeling requirements for digitally manipulated images. This year, advertisements featuring Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington were banned by Britain's Advertising Standards Authority for being too airbrushed

Designing an "objective" standard? How much editing is too much?

Dartmouth computer science professor Hany Farid and Ph.D. student Eric Kee have designed a new algorithm to measure how much images have been digitally altered. Farid and Kee based their algorithm on human perception, asking hundreds of people to compare sets of images before and after they had been Photoshopped. Participants ranked the sets of images on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 representing the least changes and 5 representing the most. Farid and Kee then used the human rankings to "train" the software, New York Times reporter Steve Lohr writes.

Farid put together a page demonstrating some of the miracles of Photoshopping where users can toggle back and forth between before-and-after shots, noting how wrinkles and bulges disappear with a click and years fade away.

A Journalist's Dilemma

Farid's software could have a big impact in journalism, too:

• In 2008, an image from Iran's Revolutionary Guard of a missile test turned out to contain an extra missile, courtesy of Photoshop.

• In 2004, Piers Morgan lost his job as the editor of Britain's Daily Mirror when the publication published manipulated images that purported to show British soldiers torturing Iraqi detainees.

• More recently, an allegedly altered image that bridges both the worlds of fashion and politics popped up on the cover of an Indian men's magazine, FHM. A recent issue features Pakistani actress Veena Malik nude, with an "ISI" tattoo across one arm. Malik insists she never posed nude during the shoot, but the magazine insists it can verify the photo's authenticity.

Some advocates hope the very existence of Farid's software might be enough to make decision-makers in both industries more honest, more likely to self-police, and less likely to make the most drastic alterations to images. What do you think?