Detecting Counterfeit Goods With Smartphone? IBM Takes advantage of AI and Blockchain
The more sophisticated the efforts to counterfeit goods, the more sophisticated the way to counter the circulation of the goods. We can detect the authenticity of an item via smartphone after IBM Research reveals an application called IBM Crypto Anchor Verifier. This application combines artificial intelligence (AI) with optical imaging and blockchain to verify the authenticity of an item, ranging from shoes, bags, money, to diamonds.
How do we use it? We simply just open the application on the smartphone, then take the picture of the item you want to verify. A woman bag, for example. AI will scan the uniqueness of the bag and compare it to the database stored on the blockchain ledger. From the database AI can verify the authenticity of the bag. No need to worry about the database being manipulated because the blockchain ledger cannot be changed.
This application is still being developed and has been used by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) which is one of IBM Research’s first clients. This application helps GIA evaluate and classify diamonds faster.
Before consumers can use this application, companies must participate and register their products in the blockchain database.
Based on data from the Indonesian Society of Counterfeiting (MIAP) the counterfeit goods market in Indonesia is large enough to result in a national economic loss of 65.1 trillion rupiah in 2014. This application could be an opportunity to fight the circulation of counterfeit goods in Indonesia in the near future.
Sources:
