Today, the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) released version 1.0 of its technical specification for digital provenance. This specification is the first of its kind and empowers content creators and editors worldwide to create tamper-evident media, by enabling them to selectively disclose information about who created or changed digital content and how it was altered.
The C2PA’s work is the result of industry-wide collaborations focused on digital media transparency that will accelerate progress toward global adoption of content provenance. Members include Adobe, BBC, Intel, Microsoft, Truepic and more.
“Today’s announcement marks a significant step toward addressing the rise in disinformation and facilitating trust online,” said Leonard Rosenthol, Chair of the C2PA Technical Working Group and Senior Principal Scientist, Adobe. “As the C2PA pursues the implementation of open digital provenance standards, broad adoption, prototyping and communication from coalition members and other external stakeholders will be critical to establish a system of verifiable integrity on the internet.”
Defining what information is associated with assets
Given the deluge of digital content and rapidly advancing technology, it is challenging for consumers to trust what they see online. Deceptive content, such as deepfakes generated by artificial intelligence or more traditionally manipulated media, can be indistinguishable from the real thing, so establishing the provenance of media is critical to ensure transparency, understanding and trust.
This C2PA specification will provide platforms with a method to define what information is associated with each type of asset (images, videos, audio or documents), how that information is presented and stored and how evidence of tampering can be identified.
As an open standard, it is designed to be adopted by any software, device, or online platform as well as by regulatory bodies and government agencies to establish standards for digital provenance.
