Document what’s happening with built-in proof.
In a world where your image or video can be accused of being AI, your word isn’t enough.
In a world where your image or video can be accused of being AI, your word isn’t enough.
Witness is a camera app that seals proof into every photo and video the instant you capture it. Then, that proof travels with the image as you share it.
Shoot photo or video in the app. Each frame is sealed with five layers of proof.
Text it, post to X, or send it to a newsroom - the proof follows as a QR code or automatic verification on X.
Anyone can scan the QR code to see all five proof layers, the timestamp, and the location.
Observers can zoom into a neighborhood, scrub through a timeline, and see what actually happened. Sharing to the map is always opt-in - your photos stay private by default.
Scrub a timeline to see events unfold hour by hour.
Zoom into any area and see all verified content there.
Join an organization to follow their feed.
Your proof lives on a decentralized network. No single company, government, or server can alter or delete it.
Let readers explore verified content from any event, browse the timeline, and see exactly where each piece was captured.
Yes, the Witness app for proving your photos and videos are real is free and available on the iOS store. The Witness Certification for creators, which involves a short live interview, is free as well.
No. Witness is not able to verify the legitimacy of media taken outside the platform. Tools that try that are basically guessing, and they get it wrong a lot.
Witness works the other way around. When you take a photo or video in the Witness app, it attaches proof right at that moment. So it can vouch for anything shot with Witness. It can’t judge a random image someone sends you.
When you screenshot a Witness photo, your phone makes a brand-new image and leaves the original proof behind, so the screenshot itself can’t be checked.
The good news: the original still can. Every Witness photo comes with a QR code and a link that point back to the real proof. If someone shows you a screenshot, track down the original and check that.
Yes. You can share images or videos directly from the Witness app to text or X. Connect your X account to the app, and a bot will reply to your tweet with instant verification.
You should know that when you upload a photo, these apps compress it and quietly strip out the proof stored inside the file. But don’t worry, Witness is built for that.
Every photo comes with its own QR code and link that live outside the image. So even after Instagram or X squeezes the file, the link still shows the proof. Post the photo, and share the link with it, and someone can trace it back to the original, uncompressed version.
Witness locks in a bundle of details that are really hard to fake. It records the phone used, the exact time, and the place an image was taken using the phone’s secure hardware.
If someone films a screen, Witness will say a real photo was taken — I mean it is a real photo of a screen — but not that the thing on the screen was real. However, the locked-in time, place, and device make it easy to check details and tell whether a suspicious attempt occurred.
A paid checkmark only proves one thing: someone paid for it. Even a fake, AI-run account can buy one.
The Witness Certified badge is earned in a short live video call where we check that you’re a real person and that you match your posts. You can fail it, and it can be taken away if you’re discovered to be using AI to alter your posts without disclosure. That’s what makes it meaningful. It shows a real human is behind the account, not an AI avatar of one.
Free. No account required. Built for citizen journalism.