Authentique Featured in Harper’s Bazaar
The Harpers Bazaar article was originally published here in English. Please see the Google Translated version below:
Authentique, the application that promises to definitely recognise a counterfeit
Digital print. The French application Authentique aims to identify counterfeits using cutting-edge technology, used in particular in aerospace and the army. It would make it possible to authenticate and trace objects, from a simple photo. The future of fashion and luxury is being written today. Clothing and other fashion items are, in the long term, about to benefit from a passport. Indeed, the European Commission aims to introduce new measures concerning the transparency of production and the traceability of luxury products manufactured and sold in Europe. And the French application Authentique can be part of the solution. Based in Paris, the company specializes in object verification using artificial intelligence.
Its basic premise: a person who makes a second-hand luxury purchase, for example, can never be certain of the authenticity of the product they are purchasing. Worse, the luxury brands themselves would, according to Simon Lock, director of the parent company of the application, be fooled by fraudulent product returns, unknowingly incorporating counterfeits into their own shelves. The cause is the fallibility of the human eye. According to him, relying on manual and physical inspections would be too risky, when a camera lens would give a reliable result with just one click. To illustrate his point, during an interview with WWD, Simon Lock took out a scarf in the famous Burberry tartan and photographed an area of it, explaining: “This is one of 23,000 scarves, all identical , and technology makes it possible to distinguish them from one another.”
Counterfeits and new ways
This is because the application born in 2021 is about to increase its skills tenfold. It has adopted a technology called FeaturePrint, which is owned by the American company Alitheon and which is used in the aerospace, military and pharmaceutical sectors. By equipping itself with this, Authentique declares that it can recognise, authenticate and trace any part, from a simple photo. This technique, used to provide products with a digital passport, applies to all kinds of situations, some of which are relatively unsuspected.
Behind the simple shooting gesture, an algorithm whose artificial intelligence examines 20,000 data points, imperceptible details and raw material and surface structures, which are then recorded in a database. This intelligence also learns to detect traces of natural wear and tear on a product, so as not to confuse them with an imitation. Unlike RFID methods (used in particular by Zara and the Inditex group and which resembles a QR Code), the size of this fingerprint would be that of a pinhead, and stored digitally. While seizure figures have never been higher, with 20 million counterfeit products removed from the market in 2023, such technology could set new standards in the fashion and luxury sector, but also that of automobiles, smartphones and other products subject to fraud. If this functionality of the application is still in the testing phase, it could very soon change the rules of the game.
To access the original French language article on Harper’s Bazaar, please click here.
