Fighting Deepfakes: LMU Spin-off Protects Digital Remembrance

Concentration camp prisoners with grotesquely emaciated bodies stare hopelessly into the camera. A camp orchestra, presented in a tawdry way dressed in striped prisoner uniforms, stands assembled in front of an electrified camp fence, seemingly ready to perform. These images are not real but instead belong to a new category of deepfakes – AI-fabricated images or videos – that exploit Holocaust imagery online to generate clicks, much to the concern of memorial sites and museums. And they are proving successful.

An even greater and largely underestimated risk is that authentic historical documents could in future be discredited as AI fabrications by politically motivated actors seeking to undermine credible historical documentation and education.

Supporting archives, documentation centers, and memorial sites

To counter this threat, LMU students Pablo Toussaint, Florimon Poisson, and Rosa Bauer founded the Global Authentic Memory Initiative or GAMI for short. This fledgling non-profit organization, which was established in November 2025, aims to help archives, documentation centers, and memorial sites protect their digitized records against this very kind of delegitimization.

“As eyewitnesses who are able to recount their experiences to the public disappear, there will soon no longer be any survivors who can speak to students directly in classrooms,” says Rosa Bauer. Their memories, preserved in film and audio recordings, “will then become the only cultural heritage we have left from this era – a heritage that must replicate living testimony for future generations.” This is where GAMI comes in.

Three publicly verifiable properties

The essence of GAMI’s concept is to protect the authenticity of digital historical materials with three technically verifiable properties – without the original files ever having to leave the archive. These properties are integrity, proof of existence, and institutional attribution of the files.

Integrity – has the file been altered?

To ensure integrity, the system generates a cryptographic “fingerprint” for each file, known as a hash value. Even changing a single bit will produce an entirely different value. Anyone who knows the original fingerprint can use it to verify at any time whether a file has remained unaltered – without requiring access to the original file itself.

Existence – how long has the file existed?

“At the moment, we are living in an era when everyone recognizes the dangers posed by deepfakes – but when we can still reliably distinguish authentic recordings from synthetic ones,” Bauer explains. “In a few years, that will no longer be the case.”

This is why GAMI embeds the digital fingerprints of files in the Bitcoin blockchain – a decentralized data structure that is maintained simultaneously across countless computers around the world and acts like a public ledger. Once a fingerprint has been embedded in this ledger, it becomes virtually impossible in computational terms to alter it retroactively. This will make it possible, even decades from now, to prove that a file already existed before technology enabled the creation of deepfakes that are indistinguishable from genuine recordings.

Institutional attribution – which institution does the file come from?

Each participating institution receives its own cryptographic key pair. Using its private key, the institution signs the file’s fingerprint, thereby confirming that the file originates from its records. Through the publicly accessible public key, anyone can independently verify the file’s institution of origin – without needing to consult GAMI or any centralized certification authority.

For the team, this independent verifiability represents the crucial difference from centrally organized solutions: even if GAMI itself should cease to exist one day, the evidence will remain permanently verifiable for archives, researchers, and the public.

The idea emerged during a start-up competition

The idea of protecting digital historical records in this way came to Pablo Toussaint and Florimon Poisson while they were participating in a start-up event organized by LMU’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center (IEC) last November, where they had the opportunity to exchange ideas on the subject. “I’ve long been interested in entrepreneurship as a tool for social change. At the event, I met Florimon, and we realized that we both had a keen interest in preserving a culture of remembrance in the digital age,” says Pablo Toussaint, who is studying for a master’s degree in geophysics at LMU. The family histories of the two men served as an important starting point for the concept behind GAMI. Poisson, a master’s student in computer science at LMU, explains:

“I come from France and grew up listening to stories from my grandparents, who witnessed the Allied landings. When I began studying in Germany, the country’s history became something I reflected on constantly.”

With the help of the “5-Euro Business Plan Competition,” which is also supported by the IEC, the team was able to launch its project. Pablo Toussaint also developed his entrepreneurial expertise through the IEC’s IMpACTup! course, which teaches the foundations of impact entrepreneurship and is run in cooperation with the University of Augsburg and the CDTM.
“GAMI exemplifies what a comprehensive university like LMU is uniquely capable of delivering: the combination of technical precision – in this case, cryptography and computer science – with a deeply rooted sense of social responsibility. In an age in which historical truth is being deliberately attacked, it is very much the role of a university that is committed to scholarship and truth to develop responses like these,” says Philipp Baaske, LMU Vice President for Entrepreneurship.

International partners and global impact

The urgent need to establish digital proof of authenticity for historical recordings is also reflected in the reactions of experts and archives. Although the organization has only existed for a few months, it is already proving very successful in building an extensive network of partners and supporters. “Our idea has generated tremendous interest. We are currently in discussions with several institutions, and the response has been consistently positive,” says Rosa Bauer.

Collaborations are planned with the German Federal Archives, the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism, concentration camp memorial sites such as Dachau and Flossenbürg, and other institutions. International contacts have also already been established, including with Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. “Our ambition is to operate at a global level,” emphasizes Rosa Bauer. Accordingly, GAMI has assembled an international team that continues to grow, including staff members and software developers who work not only from Germany, but also from the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States. GAMI’s academic advisory board includes professors from LMU, TUM, and Princeton University.

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Eine davon ist Anja Ballis, die als Professorin für Didaktik der deutschen Sprache und Literatur an der LMU forscht und lehrt. Ballis unterstützt GAMI als Expertin für Vermittlung der Holocaust-Geschichte und gehört zu den Koordinatorinnen und Koordinatoren des Projekts „Lernen mit digitalen Zeugnissen", kurz LediZ. Dabei werden Zeitzeugeninterviews gefilmt, gespeichert und als digitale und interaktive Hologramme für den Schulunterricht verfügbar gemacht: „Die Frage nach der Authentizität von Zeitzeugnissen ist keine rein technische, sondern eine zutiefst didaktische und ethische. Wenn wir historische Erfahrungen zugänglich machen wollen, müssen wir nicht nur ihre Inhalte bewahren, sondern auch ihre Glaubwürdigkeit sichern. Initiativen wie GAMI leisten hier einen entscheidenden Beitrag, weil sie die Voraussetzungen dafür schaffen, dass digitale Erinnerungsräume als verlässliche Lernräume bestehen können – gerade in einer Zeit, in der Zweifel an Wahrheit systematisch erzeugt werden“, so Ballis.

Es ist zu wünschen, dass es dem Team auch gelingt, möglichst viele Archive weltweit mit ihrer einzigartigen, weitblickenden Idee zu bewegen, ihre Daten schützen zu lassen. Damit die Zeugnisse der Erinnerung sicher vor Missbrauch sind.