The scenario
Intimate images of a victim are circulating. They may be genuine images shared without consent, or synthetic images produced from ordinary photographs of the victim's face. The distinction changes the offence, the charge, and what the victim is told — and it has to be established quickly, because the material is spreading while the case is open.
Why it is difficult
Two very different offences look identical to a viewer
A genuine image shared without consent and a synthesised composite may be indistinguishable by eye. They are not the same offence and do not carry the same evidential requirements, but the visual inspection that most cases begin with cannot separate them.
The victim is waiting
Unlike most forensic work, the subject of this examination is a person in acute distress who needs an answer and a takedown pathway. Turnaround is not a convenience here.
One offender, many victims
Synthetic NCII is produced at volume by a small number of operators using the same tooling. Investigated case by case, the pattern is invisible and each victim is treated as an isolated incident.
How Exiphore approaches it
Compositing evidence, specifically
Synthesised intimate imagery is almost always a composite — a real face onto a different body, or a generated body under a real face. Measurements target the boundary where two sources meet, which is a different question from whether the image as a whole is generated.
Sealed the moment it arrives
The exhibit is hashed and written read-only before anything else happens, so the chain of custody starts at first contact and the examination cannot be accused of having altered the material it examined.
Link the producer, not just the image
Production-characteristic fingerprints surface exhibits sharing a toolchain across unrelated cases. That is what turns a set of individual complaints into a single investigation with one subject.
Handled with the access controls it deserves
Accounts are administrator-issued, every access is recorded against a named officer in a tamper-evident log, and the material never leaves your estate.
What this will not settle
- A finding that an image is composited does not establish who produced or distributed it. That remains an investigative question.
- Face similarity across cases is an investigative lead. It is not a biometric identification and must not be presented as establishing who is depicted.
Bring us an exhibit you already know the answer to
The most useful demonstration is on your own material, from a closed case where the ground truth is settled.
Request a demoRelated use cases
Election and public-order disinformation
A clip of a public official circulates hours before polling. Triage at volume, escalate what matters, and link a coordinated campaign by what its media has in common.
Evidentiary review and disclosure
Before an exhibit is tendered, establish what can and cannot be said about it — measurements, limitations, custody and signed reasoning as one sealed record.