Events

As part of a speaker series related to the class Artificial Intelligence & Photography (VIAR 1603), Columbia University School of Arts presents a talk by Santiago Lyon, Head of Advocacy & Education at ADOBE's Content Authenticity Initiative.

From 1989 to 1999 Santiago was an award-winning conflict photographer for Reuters and The Associated Press news agencies. He covered the end of the civil war in El Salvador, the U.S. invasion of Panama, the first Gulf War, the Balkan wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, the civil wars in Somalia and Yemen as well as the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan among other major news and sports stories around the world. He was taken prisoner by Saddam Hussein’s army at the end of the First Gulf War, wounded in Sarajevo, and lost over a dozen journalist friends to violent deaths. From 2003 to 2016 he was vice president and Director of Photography of The Associated Press responsible for the AP's global photo report and the photographers and photo editors around the world who produce it.

The Content Authenticity Initiative is an Adobe-led cross-industry community of ~2,500 major media and technology companies and others working to fight mis/disinformation by creating the open-source industry standard for determining provenance around images, video, generative AI and other digital file types. Founded by Adobe in 2019, members include AFP, AP, Reuters, BBC, DPA, NYT, Washington Post, WSJ, Getty Images, and others from the media world, as well as Microsoft, Arm, Qualcomm, Leica, Nikon, Canon and more.

Santiago Lyon's public talk is presented as part of AI & IMAGE lecture series for Artificial Intelligence & Photography (VIAR1603), a class being taught by Naeem Mohaiemen at the Visual Arts Department, School of Arts, Columbia University. The class is supported by a Provost Grant for Junior Faculty research to advance Goals of Diversity.