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Remember when millions of people shared those photos of Pope Francis wearing a trendy white Balenciaga puffer jacket? The images went viral across social media, even fooling major news outlets like Time, Fox Business, and CBS News. There was just one problem: they were completely fake, generated by artificial intelligence. And since then, it only got much better at photo-realism.
The incident was so convincing that the Vatican itself had to issue public statements about the dangers of AI-generated deepfakes. It was a wake-up call about how easily we can be fooled in our digital age.
But what if there was a way to prove, beyond doubt, that something really happened at a specific place and time? That’s exactly what Eduardo Brito, a researcher at the University of Tartu in Estonia, has been working on.
But how do you prove you were somewhere when you say you were? Currently, we rely on easily manipulated evidence like photos, GPS data, or witness testimony. GPS can be spoofed (and increasingly is across Europe), photos can be faked, and even videos can now be generated by AI. “If we can no longer trust our eyes, how do we protect the truth in the digital world?” Brito wondered.
Eduardo Brito
His solution is called Proof-of-Location (PoL) – essentially a digital stamp that cryptographically proves someone or something was at a specific place at a specific time. Instead of relying on a single authority (like Google or the government) to verify location, Brito’s system uses nearby devices as “witnesses.”
Under his idea, nearby phones or smart tools would act as digital witnesses, cryptographically signing a statement that yes, your device was indeed somewhere at that specific time. The beauty is that no single entity controls this process. It’s decentralised, meaning no big tech company or government agency is collecting and storing all this location data.
To shield against surveillance risks, the system includes several built-in protections:
- Devices must opt in – Your phone can’t be forced to act as a witness without your explicit consent
- Minimal data sharing – The system only reveals what’s necessary for verification, not your personal information
- No central database – There’s no massive repository where all location proofs are stored and could be hacked or misused
“We can’t make misuse impossible, but we sure can make it much harder,” Brito explains. The applications range from journalism to supply chain management and emergency response.
Challenges are numerous, too. Legacy systems are expensive to replace, and some entities profit from controlling location data – they might not be thrilled about a decentralised alternative.
But Brito sees early adoption happening in areas where unreliable location data is already causing real problems, like logistics and content authentication. He’s already in talks with governments, NGOs, and private companies about potential applications.
“Five years from now, I see PoL quietly integrated into many of the systems we already use,” Brito predicts. “It might support trust in digital media without most users even noticing.”
The research team plans to open-source the protocol, ensuring transparency and allowing the broader community to scrutinise and improve the system.
This research was recently published in Nature Scientific Reports and represents the world’s first unified, system-level architecture for decentralised Proof-of-Location systems. The original article was sent by the University of Tartu and shared by Research Estonia.
