Vivendi relies on blockchain to gain trust

© ERIC PIERMONT/AFP/Archives Vincent Bolloré, December 10, 2015 in Paris .

In a press release published on June 19, 2024, the Vivendi group committed to “protecting and authenticating the content produced by its businesses” “. How ? Thanks to one of the flagship technologies of web 3.0: blockchain. What is it ?

It’s no secret that the Vivendi empire owned by the Bolloré family is growing bigger and bigger every year. In no particular order, the “creation unlimited” group is now backed by Lagardère, Havas, Prisma Media, Canal+, Gameloft, Dailymotion, Hachette, and the original Vivendi Village. Films and series, advertisements, video games, books, and newspapers, all these subsidiaries produce a mountain of content every day, and they need to be protected.

No weak link

This is where the aforementioned blockchain comes into play. Eldorado for some, a singularly sibylline concept for others, it is labyrinthine by nature and that is what makes it so precious.

This chain of blocks, in French, is a new way of structuring data. Ah, data! A particularly sophisticated digital storage method, which allows any transaction to be made without the slightest risk. This is what makes it a promise of trust, a kind of bridge between individuals, companies and public authorities.

Concretely, the blockchain is a huge decentralized database (with several servers) shared by all its users. It has the particularity of saving everything that happens there as is, in multiple copies. In this way, the history of the exchanges remains intact and unfalsifiable. It can be consulted by the stakeholders, themselves anonymized thanks to cryptography, and constantly (re)verified to ensure that each block addition is “honest”.

As we can read on the government website, the mathematician Jean-Paul Delahaye gives the image of a “very large notebook, which everyone can read freely and for free, on which everyone can write, but which is impossible to erase and indestructible”.

Speed ​​of transactions, system security and productivity gains, this technology first served the development of Bitcoin, before being emulated by many and becoming more widely used in banking, notaries and even commerce. Vivendi is looking into this to protect and authenticate its content.

Transparency, security and authenticity

Fabien Aufrechter, Vivendi's Web 3.0 Director, said: “Generative artificial intelligence is a driver of transformation and acceleration for the creative industries. But without a system for authenticating digital content, the risks generated by this technology cannot be ignored. This is why we are committed to a project to protect all the content we produce, with the aim of bringing all creators of digital content into our wake,” we can read in the group's press release.

Should we understand that before happily using artificial intelligence, we should ensure the authenticity of its content, its origin, its manufacture ? Paradoxical, you say ? Fine. The question is perhaps who will have the biggest… artificial intelligence, and how it will be possible to protect its production.

Vivendi, in its quest for transparency and authenticity, has joined the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA). This international grouping counts among its members Adobe, BBC, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Publicis, OpenAI, Sony and TruePic. The common denominator: Progress, of course. So, the inevitable artificial intelligence, which everyone will try to develop and use as best they can. As in any game, race or war, there are (often) rules. Everyone signs, some respect them.

The idea of ​​the company, according to Vivendi, would be to “offer open source technical solutions to combat disinformation, online fraud and the piracy of creations, by certifying in a non-falsifiable manner, via the blockchain, the origin and path of digital content.” Great activity, great project, as the comedian Edgar-Yves would say.

A new world in chains?

The question is what each person will be able to get out of this technology, once it is implemented here and there. A priori, the content creators that are the aforementioned giants will be able to easily trace the origin of their products, and therefore have their value, rarity, and ownership certified. Between them, it will therefore be a question of grabbing the biggest slice of the pie in the rules of the art.

On the specific side, while it is utopian to think that blockchain will be able to completely eliminate unwanted intermediaries, it could be that it allows us to “trust” them, since everyone should play by the same rules. Theoretically, if Vivendi’s productions are accessible only via the blockchain obstacle course, the purchaser’s data will be too. The same goes for Adobe, Google, OpenAI and others. Perhaps even a network such as FranceConnect, for example, which aims to certify our identity on various media and for various platforms, could function without each person's identity being accessible at length and in depth by the government.

As Claire Balva, co-founder of Blockchain France, explained during a TedTalk presented in 2017, “[…] many large companies are very interested in blockchain, because they see it as both a threat and an opportunity.” On the one hand, it could simply push them aside by allowing individuals to make arrangements between themselves (the example of Bitcoin); on the other, it could allow them to regain the trust of their peers and their customers. It remains to be seen whether everyone will play the game.

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