Fast Company: This image-authentication startup is combating faux social media accounts, doctored photos, deep fakes, and more

Truepic’s technology is already used by the U.S. State Department and others. The startup now wants to get social media companies on board.

Truepic was founded in 2015 by Craig Stack, a Goldman Sachs alum who saw an opportunity in making it harder for Craigslist scammers and dating-site lurkers to deceive people. “It hit me that there were all these apps that deal with image manipulation or spoofing location and time settings,” says Stack, who now serves as COO. But today the company’s primary mission is to use image-verification tools to identify and battle more formidable forms of disinformation—from the faux social media accounts that the Kremlin used to manipulate the 2016 U.S. presidential election to the doctored photos that travel the back roads of WhatsApp and catalyze violence in places like Myanmar and India.