Proteus and ZK Email How Advanced Cryptography Derisks AI Harms | Aayush Gupta at Pragma Taipei 2025

Thu, Oct 2, 2025, 12:00 AM

Aayush Gupta presents Proteus and ZK Email, exploring how advanced cryptography can mitigate AI harms like deepfakes and misinformation. Learn why digital signatures, zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), and perceptual hashing are critical for verifying content authenticity in an AI-driven world. Discover how blockchain-based provenance systems can combat image forgery while preserving privacy through MPC (Multi-Party Computation) and FHE (Fully Homomorphic Encryption). If you're interested in AI safety, cryptographic identity, and decentralized verification, this talk offers cutting-edge insights into securing digital content. 00:00 - Introduction: Cryptography’s Role in the AI Era 00:50 - The Problem: Verifying Content Provenance 01:49 - Why Watermarking Fails Against Deepfakes 03:21 - Digital Signatures as a Robust Alternative 04:49 - Real-World Use Cases for ZK Email 05:48 - How ZK Email Works: Privacy-Preserving Proofs 06:16 - Practical Applications (Docs, Flights, GitHub) 07:36 - User Adoption & Proof Volume 08:01 - Why Image Metadata-Based Provenance Fails 09:37 - Flaws in C2PA & Timestamp Vulnerabilities 10:06 - Introducing Perceptual Hashing 11:34 - Proteus: Combining Signatures + Perceptual Hashing 12:29 - How Perceptual Hashing Resists Modifications 13:59 - DINO Hash: A Better Perceptual Hashing Model 14:28 - Building a Decentralized Provenance System 15:58 - Privacy Challenges in AI-Generated Content 16:28 - MPC/FHE for Private Provenance Lookups 17:51 - Backup AI Detection for Cold Start 18:16 - Benchmarking DINO Hash vs. Existing Solutions 19:14 - Adversarial Robustness in Perceptual Hashing 20:11 - Final Takeaways & Future Work 20:40 - Resources & How to Get Involved _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇹🇼 *Pragma Taipei* Pragma Taipei 2025 was held on April 3rd at POPOP in Taipei, Taiwan and was an in-person summit for builders and leaders in the web3 ecosystem. Watch the full Pragma Taipei YouTube Playlist here: ETHGlobal's Pragma series takes place in cities around the world, and is designed to be a different kind of event. Pragma is a one-stage conference with founders-only on stage, bringing together a small group of curated attendees and speakers to discuss the future of web3 and reflect on the past. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ Follow Aayush Gupta X: https://x.com/yush_g ✅ Follow ZK Email X: https://x.com/zkemail ✅ Follow Kartik Talwar X: https://x.com/TheRealKartik ✅ Follow ETHGlobal X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/ethglobal Website: https://ethglobal.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCfF9ZO8Ug4xk_AJd4aeT5HA _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Are you interested in Ethereum development and entrepreneurship? 👉 Sign up for the next ETHGlobal event: https://ethglobal.com/events 🎁 Get exclusive access and perks with ETHGlobal Plus! https://ethglobal.com/plus 📣 Want us to throw an event in your city? Tell us where! https://ethglobal.com/city _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _