Shauli Zacks
Published on: June 4, 2025
SafetyDetectives recently spoke with Michael Sumner, Director of ScoreDetect, a platform that blends AI and blockchain technology to protect digital content and intellectual property. With a background in software engineering, SEO, and marketing, Sumner launched ScoreDetect to go beyond simple AI detection—offering creators and businesses powerful tools like blockchain timestamping, verification certificates, and automated takedown services. In this interview, he shares how ScoreDetect helps fight content fraud, enhance SEO through authenticity, and stay ahead of emerging threats in the AI-driven landscape.
Can you tell us about your background and what drew you to start ScoreDetect?
I started ScoreDetect as a way for me to initially solve a problem with AI but then realizing that there is a bigger picture besides it being “just another AI detector”. So I pivoted the business entirely to focus on intellectual property protection and copyright protection using blockchain timestamping and I found that there are numerous services out there but they do not offer what users wish to use at this point in time especially with the advent of AI. This includes the risks and dangers that AI can pose to content authenticity. So I was able to expand the business to offer content protection and enterprise solutions.
I have a very strong background in software engineering and it only came natural for me to be a technical founder. I also have extensive experience with marketing and SEO. So the only major skill remaining was to put it all together. Of course, every entrepreneur knows that this is not as easy as it sounds. Rather, it involved daily consistency, chipping away at building features, fixing bugs and working towards feedback. To ensure that users are part of the process in building this business to where it is today.
What’s the core mission behind ScoreDetect, and what problem does it solve for users?
ScoreDetect exists to provide content protection and brand protection using AI, blockchain and other multiple high technologies. We run heavily on research and development and this has proven to be highly effective in keeping up to date with the latest technologies, especially in a niche such as Protection.
How does ScoreDetect use blockchain technology to ensure digital content authenticity?
At its very core, the ScoreDetect API offers numerous ways for any service to interact with its endpoints. We provide the ability to create “Verification Certificates”. These verification certificates offer customers and their end users 24/7 access to the blockchain proofs as well as the non-blockchain proofs, therefore bolstering evidence in courts of law across the world. We’ve made sure that these verification certificates contain multiple proofs, including proofs over time, which means that a copycat would not take the effort to do such a thing. Especially considering that it is timestamped into the blockchain, which cannot be hacked. We have written a “Verification Certificate” smart contract which publicly states in code that the information can only be created and never modified or destroyed. Therefore increasing the resilience of the proofs on the blockchain.
With over 6,000 integrations via Zapier, how do you see ScoreDetect fitting into the daily workflows of businesses or creators?
For businesses and creators, essentially anything that is created or modified can require a verification certificate to base it with the blockchain as an auditable trail of that file or text. For example, lawyers may want to timestamp every email correspondence so that there is evidence within the blockchain.
The reason behind all of this is that centralized bodies create that sense of authority, whereas the blockchain itself has inherent authority due to its decentralization being publicly available, never changing, transparent, globally accessible 24/7, with a built-in consensus trust mechanism, and security via an unchanging smart contract code. This is in comparison to the “traditional centralized trust” authorities, which pose trust issues, points of failure, manipulation risks, limited accessibility and/or sensitive data attacks.
What types of digital content are most at risk today, and how can ScoreDetect help mitigate those risks?
We found a lot of images, video, and audio recently; due to the advent of AI-generated content. By using ScoreDetect, you will be able to easily takedown fraud or copycats or infringing content as you would have the first dibs on presenting that information on the internet.
What is interesting is that we now have several customers using ScoreDetect to boost SEO — This has come to light recently due to the need for creating content provenance and authenticity in a world with AI. With major search engines increasing ranking to pages which offer multiple proofs of expertise, better user experience, trustworthy content and authoritativeness.
 Looking ahead, what’s next for ScoreDetect? Are there new features, partnerships, or industry trends you’re especially excited about?
We have recently launched the ScoreDetect affiliate program so that our affiliates can start earning commissions by referring their special link to other folks who then become paid customers.
We continue to offer our enterprise solutions, which you can find on our website, including AI/ML “invisible watermarking”, infringement detection, automated takedown requests, and much more.
