LONDON, Oct. 31, 2024 – OpenOrigins, the company founded to protect content authenticity through its provenance focused blockchain, has expanded globally with a $4.5 million (£3.47 million) seed investment led by Galaxy Interactive with participation from Galaxy Ventures and existing investor Unbound, a global investment firm led by Shravin Bharti Mittal. During the past year, OpenOrigins grew quickly signing major partnerships and clients with leading media companies such as ITN, who produce content for Channel 4 and ITV. This signifies the large demand for OpenOrigins – a highly scalable decentralized content anchoring and authenticity verification solution that brings believability back into the global content and media industry in the age of generative AI.

AI-generated content and deepfake images and videos are being created with increasing ease and pace by individuals and organizations. With the public widely unable to distinguish authentic images and videos from AI-generated content, there is a critical need to restore trust in visual media, which is at an all-time low.

“We are seeing fabricated content threaten our trust in information ecosystems, destabilize political environments and rapidly increase corporate fraud. Without an immutable mechanism to prove the authenticity of content, the internet will become a collective fiction, where people can’t believe anything they see. Now is the time to safeguard non-synthetic content, establishing provable provenance, so we can share our stories, and always be believed.”

Ari Abelson, co-founder of OpenOrigins

Today, OpenOrigins’ provenance-enforcing blockchain expands globally. OpenOrigins is on a mission to safeguard the provable origins of human-created media. The company’s custom-built blockchain, anchoring solutions, and real-time camera-capture technologies protect and prove the authenticity of images and videos, providing a way for people, companies, and governments to reliably operate on fact, not fiction.

OpenOrigins’ approach to safeguarding media content is fundamentally different from existing solutions that focus on detection. Once an image’s provenance has been validated on the purpose-built blockchain, OpenOrigins is able to globally distribute this media and license it on behalf of the content provider while proving the content’s original authenticity. AI detection solutions are not able to accomplish this, as AI platforms don’t offer a decentralized, immutable public record and operate like an unscalable ‘whack-a-mole’ approach, putting out fires after the fact. In contrast, OpenOrigins’ approach is to build fireproof infrastructure.

“AI advancements are rapidly outpacing any AI detectors or retroactive solutions to authenticating content – it’s a losing arms race. Our approach is sustainable, what’s proven to be true today will still be true a decade down the line. We leverage the immutable quality of blockchains to combat AI. By proving content at source, we can guarantee what is human-created and what isn’t. In our minds, purpose built blockchains are the only acceptable solution for trust online in a world of AI.”

Dr. Manny Ahmed, founder of OpenOrigins

The company began as an academic project at the University of Cambridge, while Manny Ahmed completed his PhD.

OpenOrigins has seen extensive interest from global media companies, and has already partnered with ITN, one of the UK’s leading content producers with clients including Channel 4 and ITV, to protect the human origins of their media archives spanning the past 70 years and consisting of over a million video and audio assets. Following partnership with OpenOrigins, ITN is now able to unlock a new revenue stream by licensing their secured archives to AI companies who are responsibly training their models using OpenOrigins’ marketplace.

“ITN has been a trusted provider of high-quality British journalism for over 70 years. As synthetic media becomes more prevalent, ITN’s archive strategy has evolved to include protecting the provenance and integrity of footage as well as the physical assets. OpenOrigin’s blockchain solution has given us a route to validating our material to maintain trust and offers a route to the wider industry becoming more responsible creators and distributors of media.” 

Tami Hoffman, Director of News Distribution and Commercial Innovation, ITN.

OpenOrigins has also partnered with leading newswires to pilot novel point-of-capture technology, ensuring audiences and journalists can trust in what they see, by verifying the origins of newly captured images and videos. They have run global election coverage pilots ensuring audiences are provided with absolute confidence that what they see is real.

“At Galaxy Interactive, we invest in companies building the infrastructure for a future where digital experiences are as authentic and trustworthy as physical ones, OpenOrigins’ technology is essential to securing the provenance of digital content and enabling verifiable ownership, which are critical building blocks for a secure and trusted spatial computing future. We are excited to support OpenOrigins in their mission.”

 Jeff Brown, Partner, Galaxy Interactive.

“At Unbound, we invest in companies solving critical challenges for global industries. One of the most urgent threats today is the rise of AI-generated deepfakes, which undermine trust in media. OpenOrigins provides a vital solution for media companies, offering a defense against this growing problem. Over the past year, the strong traction OpenOrigins has seen with media organizations has validated our belief in the relevance and importance of their platform. We’re excited to deepen our commitment to OpenOrigins as they continue building the large-scale infrastructure needed to safeguard the credibility of digital media.”

Shravin Bharti Mittal, Founder of Unbound.

About OpenOrigins:
OpenOrigins proves the authenticity of media by enabling companies to secure or anchor genuine content on its provenance-built blockchain to protect against manipulation whilst providing access for the protected media to be accessed and distributed, and allowing anybody to look up content origins for themselves. OpenOrigins is ushering in the era of verifiable content truth. For more information, please visit https://www.openorigins.com/.