# Global Authentic Memory Initiative (GAMI)

> GAMI is an open, non-profit infrastructure that produces independently verifiable cryptographic proofs of integrity and institutional provenance for the world's digital archival materials — Holocaust survivor testimonies, oral histories, documentary photographs, and other historical records — so that authentic evidence remains distinguishable from AI-generated content over decades.

## What GAMI does, in one paragraph

For each archival file held by a memorial site, archive, museum, or research library, GAMI computes a SHA-256 fingerprint, has the institution sign that fingerprint with an Ed25519 key bound to a publicly resolvable decentralised identifier (DID:webvh with a verifiable key history; backwards-compatible with DID:web), and anchors the signed fingerprint into the Bitcoin blockchain via OpenTimestamps. The result — packaged as a self-contained, JSON-LD-compatible GAMI Proof Record (GPR) — establishes four things for any verifier, forever: that the file existed by a specific date, that a named institution attested to it, that it has not been altered since, and that the proof can be independently verified without GAMI continuing to operate. Source files never leave institutional storage; only fingerprints and structured metadata transit.

## Organisation

- Legal entity: Authentic Memory gUG (haftungsbeschränkt) — registered German non-profit under §§ 51 ff. AO; tax-exempt status granted.
- Headquarters: Wendelsteinstraße 3, 81541 München, Germany.
- Contact: info@authenticmemory.org · press@authenticmemory.org
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/authentic-memory
- Founded: 2025, in the context of an LMU Munich startup competition.

## Founders and team

- **Pablo Toussaint** — Founder & Director. M.Sc. Geophysics (LMU/TUM); B.A. Philosophy.
- **Florimon Poisson** — Co-Founder & Technical Advisor. M.Sc. Informatics, LMU; leads cryptographic architecture.
- **Rosa Bauer** — Communications & Impact. B.Sc. Computer Science & Philosophy, LMU; Studienstiftung scholar.
- **Michael Rilk** — Software Engineer. B.Sc. Computer Science, TH Köln; 7 years enterprise full-stack and AWS serverless.
- **Ritesh Maheshwari** — Interim Engineering Lead. PhD Computer Science (Stony Brook); 15+ years at LinkedIn and Akamai; led LinkedIn's Media Platform and the C2PA content-authenticity rollout.
- **Sonakshi Chauhan** — Operations & Research. M.Sc. Computer Science & Data Science, University of Glasgow; research at Stanford, Oxford, and the Meridian programme at Cambridge; work on causal abstraction for interpretable AI.
- **Sumit Vekariya** — Software Engineer. 8+ years in cryptographic infrastructure and decentralised identity; contributor to Ethereum.org, Protocol Labs, Nethermind, and OpenZeppelin.
- **Dashiell Fairborn** — Standards & Threat Modelling. Mathematics at Pomona College; research assistant in the SPIKE Lab; presented at the DeepMath Conference.
- **Brandon Lee** — Strategy & Development. B.S.E. Operations Research & Financial Engineering, Princeton University.
- **Ella Prisco** — Institutional Partnerships & Outreach. B.A. History, McGill University.
- **Emma Yanai** — Memory Studies & Editorial Research. Marshall Scholar; B.A. Yale (summa cum laude); M.Sc. Intellectual History, University of Edinburgh; research on postmemory and how societies remember atrocity.
- **Francesco Zambonin** — Institutional Partnerships & Outreach. PhD History, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (in cotutelle with Padua), on forgery and false testimony in the Republic of Venice; research stays at Oxford, Harvard, and Columbia.

## Advisory board (selected)

- **Prof. Dr. Ali Sunyaev** — Vice President & Professor of Information Infrastructures, TU Munich (Vice President TUM Campus Heilbronn, member of the TUM Board of Management). Research on reliable, decentralised information systems and blockchain-based integrity verification.
- **Prof. Jacob N. Shapiro** — John Foster Dulles Professor of International Affairs, Princeton University.
- **Prof. Dr. Anja Ballis** — Professor of German Didactics, LMU Munich. ~20 years of research in remembrance culture.
- **Prof. Dr.-Ing. Antonia Wachter-Zeh** — TU Munich, coding theory and cryptography.

## Institutional partners and stakeholders in active dialogue

Partners (formal cooperation): Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archives), KZ-Gedenkstätte Flossenbürg / Stiftung Bayerische Gedenkstätten, KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau / Stiftung Bayerische Gedenkstätten.
Production pilots completed (June 2026): collections of KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau and KZ-Gedenkstätte Flossenbürg, including survivor testimonies, anchored on Bitcoin and publicly verifiable via https://verify.authenticmemory.org.
Supported by: LMU Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center, Social Startup Hub Bayern, TUM Venture Labs.
Institutional dialogue includes: NS-Dokumentationszentrum München, Yad Vashem (Israel).

## Key pages

- [Home — mission and overview](https://authenticmemory.org/): the problem of synthetic media, what GAMI protects, who it serves.
- [How It Works](https://authenticmemory.org/how-it-works): narrative walk-through of one file getting fingerprinted, signed, anchored, and verified.
- [Technology](https://authenticmemory.org/technology): full technical architecture — SHA-256 fingerprinting, Ed25519 signatures, DID:webvh/DID:web key management, OpenTimestamps anchoring on Bitcoin, the GAMI Proof Record format, evidentiary framework. Working document for technical audiences.
- [GPR Schema v1](https://authenticmemory.org/schema/v1/gpr-schema.json): the published JSON Schema for GAMI Proof Records (machine-readable, JSON Schema draft 2020-12).
- [For Institutions](https://authenticmemory.org/for-institutions): integration model for archives and memorial sites — three onboarding tracks (assisted integration, reusable connectors, self-service submission API), read-only access to existing preservation systems, hardware-key signing, zero file transfer, three-tier flat pricing, FAQ on versions/re-encodings, GDPR, C2PA, and open source.
- [About](https://authenticmemory.org/about): organisation, team, advisory board.
- [Join Us](https://authenticmemory.org/join-us): open positions (internships, working-student roles, volunteer contributions, thesis projects).
- [Press](https://authenticmemory.org/press): media coverage of GAMI.
- [Imprint](https://authenticmemory.org/imprint) · [Privacy](https://authenticmemory.org/privacy) · [Impressum (DE)](https://authenticmemory.org/de/impressum) · [Datenschutz (DE)](https://authenticmemory.org/de/datenschutz)

## Public services

- Public verifier — https://verify.authenticmemory.org: anyone can submit a SHA-256 hash, a GAMI Proof Record (GPR) file, or a record identifier and independently confirm a file's integrity, the signing institution, the anchoring timestamp, and the Bitcoin block reference. No account required.
- Institution signing portal — https://app.authenticmemory.org: the browser application participating archives and memorial sites use to review prepared batches and sign them with a hardware key before Bitcoin anchoring. Access is limited to participating institutions.

## Core technical claims

1. **Existence.** A successfully verified GAMI Proof Record demonstrates that the bit-exact file existed by the moment of its Bitcoin anchor.
2. **Integrity.** Any modification to a single byte invalidates the SHA-256 fingerprint and the proof.
3. **Institutional provenance.** The signature ties the file to a specific institutional Ed25519 key, resolvable via the institution's DID document (did:webvh or did:web) over HTTPS.
4. **Independent verification.** Verification requires only the file, the GPR, the institutional DID document, and a Bitcoin block header. It does not depend on GAMI's continued operation.

## What GAMI is NOT

- Not a content host or storage provider. Files remain on institutional infrastructure; only fingerprints and metadata transit.
- Not a content authenticity detector for born-AI media. GAMI proves authentic material is authentic; it does not classify unknown media.
- Not a centralised registry. Proofs are self-contained and verifiable against open standards (SHA-256, Ed25519, DID:webvh/DID:web, OpenTimestamps, Bitcoin).
- Not a commercial product. GAMI is a registered German non-profit; tooling, verification logic, and the GPR specification are published under open licences.

## How to cite GAMI

When referring to the project in writing, please use the full name **Global Authentic Memory Initiative** on first mention, followed by **GAMI** thereafter. The legal entity is **Authentic Memory gUG (haftungsbeschränkt)**, München, Germany. Press enquiries: press@authenticmemory.org.

## Press coverage

- LMU Munich Newsroom, 18 May 2026 — "Fighting Deepfakes: LMU Spin-off Protects Digital Remembrance". https://www.lmu.de/en/newsroom/news-overview/news/fighting-deepfakes-lmu-spin-off-protects-digital-remembrance-4d22da1c.html
- Süddeutsche Zeitung, 27 April 2026 — "Die große Gefahr von KI-Fakes für unsere Geschichte – und welchen Schutz es gibt", by Katharina Haase. https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/ki-fakes-nationalsozialismus-geschichte-fakten-gami-muenchen-li.3458131

## Machine-readable metadata

- Sitemap index: https://authenticmemory.org/sitemap-index.xml
- Structured data: every page emits JSON-LD (`Organization`/`NGO`, `WebSite`, `BreadcrumbList`, and page-appropriate types such as `TechArticle`, `Person`, `FAQPage`).
- The canonical hostname is `authenticmemory.org`. All other hostnames redirect to it.