Sentinel loads up with $1.35M in the deepfake detection arms race – TechCrunch

Estonia-based Sentinel, which is developing a detection platform for identifying synthesized media (aka deepfakes), has closed a $1.35 million seed round from some seasoned angel investors -- including Jaan Tallinn (Skype), Taavet Hinrikus (TransferWise), Ragnar Sass & Martin Henk (Pipedrive) -- and Baltics early-stage VC firm, United Angels VC. The challenge of building tools to detect deepfakes has been likened to an arms race -- most recently by tech giant Microsoft, which earlier this month launched a detector tool in the hopes of helping pick up disinformation aimed at November's U.S. election. "The fact that [deepfakes are] generated by AI that can continue to learn makes it inevitable that they will beat conventional detection technology," it warned, before suggesting there's still short-term value in trying to debunk malicious fakes with "advanced detection technologies." Sentinel co-founder and CEO Johannes Tammekänd agrees on the arms race point -- which is why its approach to this "goal-post-shifting" problem entails offering multiple layers of defence, following a cybersecurity-style template. He says rival tools -- mentioning Microsoft's detector and another rival, Deeptrace, aka Sensity -- are, by contrast, only relying on "one fancy neural network that tries to detect defects," as he puts it.