Wrote AI the phrase you are reading right now? AI created the photograph you just saw online? Was the shocking, controversial story that tilted a choice that was actually real, or AI-driven wrong information?
These are questions that Clara Tsao has been struggling with for years from protecting national security (where she was CTO of a team that focused on counteracting homework extremism) to creating a better internet where she co -founded the Trust & Safety Professional Association. (She also somehow finds time to be president of the White House presidential innovation fellow and serve as senior adviser at Tech Against Terrorism.)
“For me, it has always been about how we bring more democracy to the Internet because it is an open network that everyone needs to have the basic human right to access,” says TSAO, a basic officer at the Filecoin Foundation, and which is shown on stage at the AI summit at Consensus 2025.
Tsao knows that AI in a way makes all these jobs harder. So Filecoin is focused on using blockchain to secure digital authenticity and sniff out forgeries. “AI goes to Turbolad, everything we see today, too good and too bad,” says Tsao. “And at the end of the day, I think everyone will know if they are talking to an AI or to a human being.”
Interview has been condensed and easily edited for clarity.
How has AI complicated the mission for an open and trusted internet?
Clara Tsao: So one of the biggest risks with AI is, how can we see if something is AI or bot-generated, against something that we know can be a human in the loop. And when I worked with topics like counteracting foreign influence operations, how do you prove that a bad actor actually came from a country that we know maybe trying to intervene with us?
Can you give an example?
There was a period, I think in 2016, when Facebook actually took a lot of media channels that came from Russia because it was linked to the Internet Research Agency, which is a group that certainly tried to push propaganda during the election. So it’s about being able to prove the source of information and make sure people don’t become a victim of wrong information.
And forgeries are getting easier and easier to create thanks to AI …
Right. And with AI-generated images and AI-Generated News, using this technology for evil can be easy for the very bad actors.
Can you connect the dots to how blockchain helps crack this problem?
One thing that is great about decentralized technologies – and decentralized storage specifically – is that you can actually prove how data changes over time because we store each piece of data after hashish, not by location.
So let’s say we have a data set and we are worried that the data might be manipulated. Maybe a government comes in and changes something so it can fit their political agenda. There are many reasons why it is more important to preserve information than ever, and this is something we can definitely do with Filecoin.
Who are you working specifically with?
We have worked with lots of amazing non -profit organizations over the years, such as MuckRock, to ensure that we can not only archive and maintain critical information, but also make sure it is manipulating, make sure it is resistant. For example, if it is information that journalists draw from the fact that we can have resilient copies of it all over the world. We can also use the same technology to really prove that this journalist took a particular photo.
In certain choices, there may be disinformation as to whether or not something happened or you can get photographers to use decentralized technologies. And we have lots of applications of companies that build on the top of Filecoin today that help verify that this image was taken from this device at this time.
It is really powerful in terms of not only daily journalism, but also by being able to be allowed in courts. In Ukraine, there may be war photos that can be taken out of context. And we are able to preserve a number of key photographs that can one day be assumed for treatment by international criminal courts for human rights situations.
How are you thinking about Filecoin’s mission now?
We can help verify if you are talking to AI or a human being. We can help store data to a fraction of the cost. We can make sure that data is more accurate because most AI data sets are built to train tons of data. And the storage of data is very expensive. So our goal is to make data storage affordable for everyone and make sure people also pull off as much data as possible, so AI agents are not only trained from a subgroup.
And in the end, we can have a place where it is not just monopolies that can access lots of data. People can have a choice about where to store it, how to store it. So they are not locked in a walled garden where they can never get out.
Love it. Thanks Clara. See you in Toronto by consensus!
Jeff Wilser hosts the AI summit in Consensus 2025 and hosts People’s AI: The Decentralized Ai Podcast.
