Microscale 3D Printer for Multi-Level Anticounterfeiting Labels

Counterfeiting often a big deal in retail.

 Microscale 3D Printer for Multi-Level Anticounterfeiting Labels

University of Hong Kong, December 13, 2022

University of Hong Kong (HKU) engineers designed a microscale three-dimensional (3D) printing method for fabricating anticounterfeiting labels that can encrypt more digital data than two-dimensional labels. HKU's Jihyuk Yang said the researchers used diphenylalanine (FF) as the encryption medium because of its piezoelectrical and optical birefringence properties. HKU's Ji Tae Kim said the methodology integrates with molecular self-assembly to "print multi-segmented 3D FF micro-pixels with programmed crystallinity for high-density data encryption. By utilizing different responses of the amorphous and crystalline segments to polarized light, a tiny single 3D pixel can encrypt a multi-digit binary code consisting of '0' and '1.'"  ... ' 

AI's for Art Forgery?

Some good points made here, in their current state these are not really even forgery-perfect.   But they could be.  And not to say they could not do other kinds of counterfeiting that don't require so much testing and identity accounting.   

AI: The Next Great Art Forger

Posted by Stephanie Glen in DSC

AI develops new “art” using image analysis.

GANs do not create, they repaint.

The result is a pastiche, a poor copy of the real thing.

AI art is created with algorithms that enable AI to learn a specific aesthetic by analyzing thousands of images; The algorithm then attempts to generate new images based on that learning [1].  Original pieces can also be created by GANs, which pit two neural networks against each other. The result is “art” that is difficult to differentiate from human-made artwork. One such piece, Portrait of Edmond Belamy, sold for a staggering $432, 500 when it went under the hammer at Christie’s Prints & Multiples sale at Christie’s on 23-25 October last year [2].

But do these AI-generated pastiches qualify as real art? Probably not. Many in the art and AI communities agree that these cannot be called art, at least in the traditional sense. Even if you could stretch the definition of art to include AI-generated images, they are of poor quality and no better than a factory produced knock off.    ..." 

Catching Counterfeits with AI

Worked on counterfeit identification for CPG Products,would have helped to be be to quick scan products and packaging.

Catching the Fakes

By Neil Savage    Communications of the ACM, May 2021, Vol. 64 No. 5, Pages 13-14    10.1145/3453696

Counterfeiting is a big business. Nearly $509 billion of fake and pirated products were sold internationally in 2016. In that year, the latest for which data was available, counterfeit goods made up 3.3% of international trade, up from 2.5% three years earlier, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

That figure, which does not include domestic trade in fakes, not only means companies are losing revenue and consumers are not getting their money's worth; counterfeiting also helps fund organized crime. It exploits low-wage laborers. Because it skirts safety regulations, makers of counterfeits could use toxic materials or produce unsafe products.

Now, companies are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to help them identify counterfeit products and stanch the flow of faux goods.

Amazon, for instance, launched Project Zero in 2019. Makers of products provide the company with data about their logos, trademarks, and other features, and Amazon's machine learning algorithm scans listings on the company's website and automatically removes those it deems fake.

Other companies have rolled out tools to allow retailers to identify fakes using smartphones with scanning attachments.

"Counterfeit goods are among the leading causes of a lot of bad things," says Lakshminarayanan Subramanian, a professor of computer science at New York University and co-founder and chief scientist at Entrupy, a New York-based company founded in 2012 that uses AI to verify the authenticity of luxury goods.

The company's system works with microscopic images of the goods in question, looking for features that are common to an authentic product but not to a fake. Those features could be in the texture of the material, the stitching, a zipper, or the way a logo has been stamped into an item. The leather of a luxury handbag, for instance, will have what appear to be peaks and valleys when viewed at a microscopic scale.

Entropy trains its AI starting with images of an area of handbags, both authentic and counterfeit, and breaks that image into smaller chunks. It then applies bag-of-words, a technique developed for natural language processing that sorts words by their frequency in a text and uses that to make inferences about the text. In the case of handbags, the "words" are small areas of structural features that might repeat or vary from place to place across the material. The computer creates a histogram showing the frequency of these visual words and how that frequency differs between real and fake goods.  ... " 

Self Erasing Chip

Some intriguing applications, could have used this for counterfeiting applications.  Expiring analysis applications.

A Self-Erasing Chip for Security, Anti-Counterfeit Tech

University of Michigan News

September 24, 2020

University of Michigan researchers have developed self-erasing chips based on a material that temporarily stores energy, changing the color of light it emits. The chips are assembled from a three-atom-thick layer of semiconductor material deposited on a thin strip of azobenzene-based molecules, which shrink under ultraviolet light; those molecules tug on the semiconductor so it emits longer wavelengths of light. The stretched azobenzene naturally releases its stored energy, losing stored data, over the course of about seven days in no light, or it can be erased on demand with a pulse of blue light. A self-erasing bar code printed on the chip within a device could flag whether someone had opened it to install a spying device. ...'

Amazon and Counterfeiting Crimes

An area we also worked in, detecting counterfeits.  But then isn't this another cooperation with law enforcement?

Amazon forms Counterfeit Crimes Unit to tackle its fake goods problem
The unit will work with brands and law enforcement around the world.
By Mariella Moon, @mariella_moon in Engadget

Amazon has been grappling with a counterfeit problem for years to the point that it reportedly decided to be more cooperative with law enforcement a few months ago. Now, the e-commerce giant has formed a new division called the Counterfeit Crimes Unit that’s dedicated to taking down fraudsters selling fakes on its website. The unit is composed of former federal prosecutors, experienced investigators and data analysts, working together to find offenders and hold them accountable wherever they are in the world..... " 

Tag of Everything to Protect Supply Chain

Tagging everything uniquely.  Authenticity.  Devil in the details.  " ... Tiny, battery-free ID chip can authenticate nearly any product to help combat losses to counterfeiting. .. "

Cryptographic 'Tag of Everything' Could Protect Supply Chain
MIT News
Rob Matheson

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have created a cryptographic identity tag that can be attached to virtually any product in order to verify its authenticity. The millimeter-sized "tag of everything" operates on low levels of power from photovoltaic diodes, and transmits data via a power-free backscatter technique. The tag employs algorithm optimization to run an elliptic curve cryptography scheme to ensure secure communications that requires little power. MIT's Mohamed I. Ibrahim said, "We think we can have a reader as a central hub that doesn't have to come close to the tag, and all these chips can beam-steer their signals to talk to that one reader."  ... ' 

Hypertaste for Chemical Sensing

We worked on automating taste and smell, but it was still not possible at the time.  Could have used this to analyse coffee, green and roasted, to determine its use in blends.  Counterfeiting too would be an application, also mentioned

IBM’s new Hypertaste system is an AI-assisted, reprogrammable chemical sensor  By Maria Deutscher in SiliconAngle.

Researchers at IBM Corp.’s Zurich lab today unveiled their latest project: a chemical detection system called Hypertaste that uses artificial intelligence to classify liquids.

Distinguishing different beverages and food items is usually a trivial task for humans, but the same can’t be said for the machines that experts use when the taste test doesn’t cut it.

Systems capable of performing chemical analysis on liquids generally fall into one of two categories. They’re either portable instruments that provide only limited information such as the pH level of a lake or bulky, expensive systems built for use in labs.

IBM developed Hypertaste for scenarios where a detailed chemical analysis is necessary but it’s not possible or economically feasible to send a sample to a lab. One application the company envisions for the system is evaluating the water quality of rivers. Another is finding counterfeit goods, such as low-quality perishable items shipped to a grocery chain by an untrustworthy supplier.  .... " 

Amazon Addresses Counterfeiting

In the enterprise we spent much time in detecting and addressing, challenging counterfeit product,  it was one of the earliest places we implemented machine learning, well before the idea was commonly used, so this effort is interesting to follow:

Amazon Brings Big Guns to Battle Against Counterfeit Products   By Jack M. Germain 
Project Zero in ECommerceTimes

Amazon on Thursday announced Project Zero, a program that empowers vendors to help drive counterfeits down.

The anti-counterfeit campaign will employ Amazon's advanced technology, machine learning and innovation. Amazon will partner with Project Zero's participating vendors to protect their intellectual property by detecting and removing counterfeits of their products.

Project Zero will utilize three tools to safeguard against counterfeit products: automated protection systems, a self-service counterfeit removal tool, and product serialization.

The program's aim is to ensure that customers always receive authentic goods when shopping on Amazon. ....   "

Fake Wines (and other drinks/foods/products?)

Can complex, pricey wines be replicated far more cheaply by recreating them with equivalent mixtures of tastes using chemistry?  A similar approach was used when we analyzed component green coffees in blends for well known tastes and interactions.  We essentially we did this by using AI and optimization based analysis of blends to find taste equivalent results.  Verified by professional tasting.  So were these fakes, or reasonable equivalence to human abilities to taste?   We called it good business. Good piece with interesting commercial implications.  This is also done in other non-food businesses too, like the formulation and manufacture of paints.  The human interaction with the product can now be done in more precise ways than before.

Also consider: Counterfeit goods detection via machine learning.

Your Next Glass of Wine Might be a Fake --- and You'll Love it.  In Wired. by Bruce Schoenfeld.

Replica Wine makes cheaper copies of your favorite wine at a discount by analyzing its chemistry. Often, even professional critics can't tell the difference. Is this heresy or just good business?

" ... Over the past four years, Ellipse has analyzed thousands of wines, a formidable chunk of the American marketplace. More than anyone else, it is safe to say, the IBG team can scientifically define what the most popular wines taste like. “Only we, uniquely, have this data to say, ‘If you like Goldeneye, we know exactly why you like Goldeneye,’” Walker says about a California Pinot Noir that IBG will soon be trying to replicate. “And we know what else you’re likely to like. And what you won’t.”

IBG can’t replicate every wine. Those with singular attributes, like wines made from grapes grown in a specific vineyard or from a hard-to-find variety, are far more difficult, bordering on impossible, for the simple reason that all of IBG’s wines start with those surplus lots being sold on the bulk market. When I ask Zimmerman if they could replicate a small-batch Shiraz from a producer in Australia’s Adelaide Hills that is a particular favorite of mine, he rolls his eyes and says there’s no way.

But the world’s most popular wines—from Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay to Dom Perignon—are made hundreds of thousands of bottles at a time, enough volume that their grapes are sourced from a range of vineyards. “The reason K-J is so successful,” Hicks says about Kendall-Jackson, “is that it tastes consistent, year after year, bottling after bottling. You know what you’re going to get, like Coca-Cola or Campbell’s soup.” If Kendall-Jackson is using what seems like a fairly exact recipe to make each vintage of its wines, Hicks figures, there’s no reason that IBG, with its reams of scientific data, can’t match it. .... "

Counterfeit Goods Detector

We worked on the detection of counterfeit goods for some time, this would have been very useful. Will take a deeper look.

IBM built a handheld counterfeit goods detector
The AI tricorder knows those aren't official Yeezys.

By Rachel England, @rachel_england in Engadget

Just a month after IBM announced it's leveraging the blockchain to guarantee the provenance of diamonds, the company has revealed new AI-based technology that aims to tackle the issue of counterfeiting -- a problem that costs $1.2 trillion globally. IBM Crypto Anchor Verifier brings together AI and optical imaging to help prove the identity and authenticity of frequently forged goods such as fine wine, diamonds and medicine, as well as analyze water quality and detect bacteria, such as E.coli. And the technology is small enough to use with a cell phone camera. ... " 

Product Counterfeiting

I was involved with a number of product counterfeiting analysis and detection projects for CPG products.   Often working with retailers.   Its much more common globally than you think, even with relatively common home CPG goods.   Not surprising that Amazon is involved given the number of SKUs they handle.

Amazon faces criticism for being 'complicit' with counterfeiters
"The reputation you've built goes down the toilet," says Elevation Lab's founder.

By Steve Dent, @stevetdent in Engadget

Amazon pledged to tackle counterfeiting in 2017, but its lax policies are still hurting inventors and small companies, one supplier says. In a blog post, Elevation Lab founder Casey Hopkins wrote that a Chinese manufacturer ripped off its popular under-desk headphone stand, "The Anchor" and is selling it cheap on Amazon and taking all its sales. Worse, he claims that Amazon is effectively abetting such counterfeiters and could do away with it via a simple change

According to Hopkins, the counterfeit seller "literally reverse engineered it, made steel compression molds, made the logo wrong, used fake 3M adhesive that's very thin and was die-cut smaller than the top, they used a lower durometer silicone so it flexes more, it has huge mold parting lines, and the packaging is literally photocopied then reprinted (you can tell by the lack of image contrast)."  ... ' 

Blockchain Addressing Counterfeit Drug Problem

Blockchain Technology Could Help Solve $75 Billion Counterfeit Drug Problem

Counterfeit drugs are a growing problem, but one company wants to use blockchain technology, which underpins bitcoin, to help eradicate it by creating an open and trusted record of where drugs have come from. ... 

According to CoinDesk, management consulting services company Accenture proposed the initiative at a meeting of the HyperLedger Project, which is run by the Linux Foundation and seeks to build an open-source repository of blockchain code that will address current gaps in the technology. .... " 

QR Codes and Counterfeiting

In Retailwire: Using QR codes to eliminate counterfeit goods.  We examined a number of watermarking methods.

Methods for Dealing with Product Counterfeiting

An important challenge for the CPG enterprise.  Nothing very new here, but some thoughts about how to address these challenges.  Emphasizing food and beverage issues, but broadly applicable:

" ... Counterfeiting of branded goods is growing globally, and losses from counterfeiting cost retailers and manufacturers nearly $1 trillion each year and more than 75,000 jobs in the U.S., according to a study from the Food Marketing Institute and Grocery Manufacturers Association.

“This study pinpoints the opportunities that retailers and manufacturers have to reduce the chance for counterfeit products from reaching shelves and finding their way into consumers’ homes,” said Mark Baum, FMI‘s senior vice president of industry relations and chief collaboration officer. “We must be vigilant about safeguarding our supply chain from counterfeiters and step up our efforts to stop organized retail theft.” ... "