The Chinese Government Is Pumping Money Into The Study Of Photoshop

The Chinese government is reportedly pouring money into the study of Photoshop and other digital image editing tools, according to the South China Morning Post.

The money is being tunneled to research teams at major universities in the hope that they can develop a way to quickly determine whether an image has been manipulated, the paper reports. The fear is that doctored photographs may be used to blackmail government workers. Indeed, leaked photographs and videos that appear to show officials performing unsavory acts have become a regular embarrassment for Beijing.

The technology is also meant to catch altered images put up by government officials themselves. A number of recent images from China have gone viral after Internet users pointed out that they were had obviously been crudely altered (including the bizarre photograph above).