In a digital world where AI-generated content and cybersecurity threats are rapidly rising, protecting authenticity has never been more important. In this interview with Website Planet, Michael Sumner, Director at ScoreDetect, shares how his company is helping creators and businesses safeguard their digital work, from blockchain timestamping to invisible watermarking, and what the future holds for content verification.
What inspired you to create ScoreDetect, and how has the company evolved since its founding?
3 years ago, it was predicted that AI would reach a point where it cannot be distinguished from human-written content. So we were going to build a score-based AI detector. But soon found out that thinking 5-10 years from now — the issue will be a moot point. Instead, we need to figure out how to protect human-written content and provide authenticity factors with the most important factor being a blockchain timestamp. We have since extended our products for serious business owners such as Invisible Watermarking for images, video, and audio. We now also offer SEO boosts due to the increase in Google E-E-A-T by having a “Verified by ScoreDetect” badge on your articles — something that we offer called the “Timestamps” WordPress plugin.
How does ScoreDetect differentiate itself from other content protection and verification services?
What makes ScoreDetect different is that it offers a suite of integrations by taking a single action. This means that the set of proofs of authenticity can extend to different platforms with your single ScoreDetect account.
For example, you can have a blockchain timestamping solution for your Verification Certificates, but the Verification Certificates can be downloaded offline and saved for use in a court of law. Or, the certificates can be shared online with others publicly on the internet for independent auditing and scrutiny.
Can you explain your approach to ensuring the authenticity and ownership of digital content?
By uploading your file or text into the ScoreDetect platform either through our web platform or API, or a further integration such as Zapier or WordPress and many more; you will receive a Verification Certificate with an accompanying Recognition Certificate. These allow you to assert your copyright and authenticity and ownership of your digital content. Because the asset is “hashed”, and the hash is stored into the blockchain. This makes it visible that the hash will never change indefinitely, thus solidifying the “proof of authenticity”.
What types of digital content are most at risk, and how does ScoreDetect address these challenges?
We have started seeing books, Social Media videos, inventions, scientific papers, and business assets considered most at risk recently. You can upload any file size into the ScoreDetect web platform and it will create a blockchain timestamp with the hash and assertion of your ownership. All you need to do is keep the original file — and you can validate the matching file either through the ScoreDetect web platform and even offline using a local SHA256 hash tool. Every file hash is unique per file contents, so you can treat your file as the “key” to identifying your ownership too.
What future developments or innovations can users expect from ScoreDetect in the coming years?
We are always improving our suite of features, and we’ll soon be implementing more features to assert your ownership. We aim to be a tool that empowers you to assert ownership of your files that you rightly own. With the advent of AI and cybersecurity threats, this becomes even more important to assert ownership of your digital files.
