Content Authenticity Initiative

Artificial Intelligence introduces the inevitability of content capture, use and manipulation that are invisible to the naked eye. When it comes to photo and other images, consumers are no longer quite sure where factual reality ends and changes - including fakes - begin. Santiago Lyon, an award-winning war photographer, my guest on the latest 'Understanding IP Matters,' is Head of Advocacy and Education for the @Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), an Adobe-lead group of 4,000 members founded in 2019 that endeavors to establish provenance for all images through standardized open-source system. “It’s comparable to a digital nutrition label,” says Lyon, who was a journalism fellow at Columbia and Harvard, and served as an editor at the Associated Press. “CAI is focused on accelerating implementation of Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) as an underlying technical standard.” C2PA is focused on understanding the provenance or the origins of digital content. "Where they come from, how they might have been manipulated, and then sharing some or all of that information with the consumer or the viewer of those files.” For a summary of this informative episode, go to the latest issue of IP CloseUp, here: https://lnkd.in/e3tKY4PZ To directly access "Ex-war photographer helps remove the mystery from images and content," go here: https://lnkd.in/e38T4Xq8

🏆 We're proud to share that Adobe has received the ITI Tech Impact Award from the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) for our work accelerating widespread adoption of Content Credentials! The award is one of five recognizing tech leaders' commitment to solving global challenges through innovation and open collaboration. "Their breakthrough collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) marked the first federal agency implementation of Content Credentials, allowing authentication of DoD imagery captured and used," writes ITI. "Adobe has extended this work into protecting election integrity, advising the U.S. Senate and House on combating deepfakes and ensuring transparency in campaign and government content. The company's influence has extended globally, with governments from Canada to India exploring the use of the provenance tool to help restore public trust in digital content. This demonstrates Adobe's pivotal role in developing practical solutions for verifying digital content authenticity in the AI era." 🟡 See the full announcement: https://lnkd.in/e2HTDhya

Delighted to be featured in this podcast and piece on IPWatchdog, Inc where Bruce Berman and I discuss the work of the Content Authenticity Initiative seeking to accelerate implementation of Content Credentials, a "digital nutrition label" developed by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) that allows viewers to understand the origins of digital files, ever-important in this sometimes confusing era of generative AI. Thanks Bruce. https://lnkd.in/ew33r7DH

LinkedIn News Europe recently asked me what big ideas I think will shape the tech agenda in 2025 💡 Many came to mind, but in a year dominated by deepfakes and realistic AI content, I predict 2025 will see 'digital nutrition labels', like Content Credentials, increasingly adopted to fight back against trust decay. Developed by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) and supported by the Content Authenticity Initiative, Content Credentials use secure metadata to disclose how a piece of content has been created. You can see one in action on OpenAI's recent LinkedIn announcement of their AI video generator, Sora (link in the comments). As AI content is increasingly 'hidden in plain sight', navigating our digital world can be challenging. Digital nutrition labels aren't a silver bullet to this problem and they don't tell you what is 'true'. What they do is provide crucial information to help audiences decide for themselves whether to trust content and which context to view it from. Governments are increasingly demanding/legislating for action to preserve trust in the synthetic age and AI companies/brands are also beginning to recognise its value in forming strong consumer relationships. So as 2024 comes to a close, keep an eye out for more frequent digital nutrition labels in the year ahead! Check out my full contribution and the other big ideas shaping tech in 2025 below: https://lnkd.in/e-4wMuia #AI #BigIdeas2025 #deepfakes #trust

🔗 How do you maintain digital provenance when platforms or social media sites strip Content Credentials information from an image or video? Understanding the source and history of an asset has a variety of applications that include maintaining creator attribution to strengthening the integrity of news reporting or the relationship between a brand and its audience. The promise of Content Credentials is that it can combine secure metadata, watermarking, and fingerprinting technology to offer the most comprehensive solution available for expressing content provenance for audio, video, and images. 🟡 What we’ll cover: - An introduction to what makes Content Credentials durable - Implementations for the creator economy and ecosystem developments - New innovations and a demo that bring Content Credentials to physical objects 🟡 How to join this event for CAI members - Not a member yet? Join us https://lnkd.in/gXkGtZ3s - Already a member? Sign in using the same email address you used when signing up as a CAI member. Once you're signed in, RSVP here https://lnkd.in/dYTA4kd5 #contentcredentials #contentauthenticity

In the future of digital trust, context matters. A study by researchers Olivia Burrus, Amanda Curtis, and Laura Herman found that viewers believed the use of generative AI in news content to be a clear signal that the information is untrustworthy, whereas the same viewers found using it acceptable in the context of influencer-marketing content. "There is a clear need for a labeling system that takes a deeply researched approach, responding to cultural shifts in awareness, comprehension, and trust of GenAI and its outputs," they wrote. "We need active participation in industrywide collaborations, adherence to legislative measures, and the integration of provenance information at both the creation and display stages of AI-generated content." See their findings published on ACM Interactions: https://lnkd.in/erw8PAke

🟡 “We are going to have to contend with a complex world that goes beyond just AI or not,” writes Hany Farid, UC Berkeley professor, CAI advisor, in his latest piece analyzing the power of generative AI editing features directly in mobile devices. The seamless integration of generative AI content into photographs created on mobile devices raises more nuanced questions, he says. ✍️“What parts of an image are manipulated, and how much manipulation is too much?”

🌎 Can AI technology contribute to a more equitable world? According to Partnership on AI (PAI), it should. We sat down with Claire Leibowicz, Head of AI and Media Integrity at PAI, to chat about their multi-stakeholder approach to building responsible practices for AI development and use. 📖 We spoke about how to get started in the AI policy field, how best to convey to people that content has been generated or manipulated with AI, and the findings from their latest set of case studies putting policy guidelines into practice. "One theme that emerged is that people don’t necessarily just want to know if content has been AI-generated," she said. "They want to know if it’s been edited in a way that matters to them, changes the meaning of content, or is deceptive." Read more: https://lnkd.in/eDvTvgVa 

🗞️ Looking to stay up to date on the latest happenings in digital provenance and generative AI? Join experts and CAI advisors Henry Ajder and Hany Farid for their next conversation about what's on their radar and what you need to know. They'll be joined by guest speaker Anya Schiffrin, director of the Technology, Media, and Communications specialization at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. 🌟 To view and RSVP to upcoming virtual and in-person events, you must be a CAI member and signed in using your account. Not a member yet? Join us! https://lnkd.in/gXkGtZ3s RSVP: https://lnkd.in/e9XNcVEC

I'm honored to be chosen as a "Technologist of the Year" by Fast Company! This recognition is shared with my incredible Adobe Content Authenticity Initiative teammates who are featured for the second year in a row in the "General Excellence" category! I am extremely proud of the team and our accomplishments, thrilled to see the recognition here, and eager to continue the work of Content Credentials in 2025. Congrats fellow honorees Natalya Lopareva Daniela H. Valentyn Volkov