Image authentication startup Truepic said Tuesday it has acquired the intellectual property and software behind San Jose-based Fourandsix Technologies—including Izitru, an image forensics technology licensed earlier this year by DARPA.
Fourandsix (pronounced “forensics”), founded by Hany Farid, a Dartmouth professor and digital forensics expert, and Kevin Conner, formerly vice president of product management for Adobe’s (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ADBE]]) digital imaging business, is shutting down.
Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
“Hany and Kevin’s work was far ahead of its time, for the first time providing the Internet with a real method for rooting out image-based fraud and disinformation,” Truepic CEO Jeffrey McGregor said in a prepared statement.
Truepic, a San Diego company started in 2016 by Craig Stack, has focused on determining the authenticity of an image through what it calls controlled capture technology: camera software that uses imaging and geospatial sensors on mobile devices to verify that images haven’t been altered. Stack is the company’s chief operating officer.
Writing on publishing platform Medium, McGregor said Truepic is planning to use the new technology it has acquired to develop a new product that can detect manipulation in photos that weren’t taken within the Truepic ecosystem.
“What’s clear is that both approaches will be important tools for restoring trust in images across the Internet, and Truepic providing a more holistic set of solutions will allow us to better service our wide array of partners,” he said.
Earlier this year, DARPA licensed Izitru for its media forensics research initiative, MediFor.
As part of the deal, Farid is joining Truepic’s board of advisors. He’s also set to join the faculty at UC Berkeley, at both the School of Information and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, in the summer of 2019.
Truepic reported raising a Series A financing round of $8 million in June.
