You're not testing what you think you're testing. We can verify an image, but still have problems with the story below the image. I don't think this should be half-solved, it would give false credence to real images used in lies. Or the reverse, you discredit a fake image of Musk you saw yesterday, but tomorrow he does it for real.
You'd need to give political campaigns' keys some trust, for images you expect from them. But what if they start signing images that you wouldn't expect from them, then you have 'verified' fake news.
There’s actually a web standard to authenticate images.
Several cameras on the market implement it, and even openai authenticates their images.
The limit of signing an image is that any modification will break authentication, but zero knowledge proofs can be used to “preserve authentication”. The current signatures & zkp have some practical limitations for large images, but nothing that won’t be fixed soon, if I had to guess.
I recommend this presentation: https://youtu.be/EKoY8ysGblk?si=3-lLrzCP7263sY_J
What is the problem solved or revenue opportunity from image verification and authentication?
A fake image of Elon doing whatever would general billions of clicks, ad impressions, etc., which is all that matters.
If you want to get only genuine images from AP, CNN, etc., just go to those websites (using HTTPS).
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There are lots of problems with this approach, but one of the bigger ones is that if everyone has their own keys, then everyone can create signed images that have been manipulated.
So even if you you can get people to actually verify images (and bear in mind how hard it is to get people to manage keys and use something like GPG), not to mention the technical issues with image reproduction, this would only give you protection in cases where someone is claiming that an image was created by a specific individual and it wasn't. But that's not the problem in the vast majority of instances.