Introducing the Content Authenticity Initiative

Proper content attribution is critical to ensure trust and transparency

Today, at Adobe MAX 2019, in collaboration with The New York Times Company and Twitter, we announced the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) to develop an industry standard for digital content attribution.

With the volume of digital content increasing, people want to know that what they’re seeing online is authentic. Yet, currently there’s a lack of transparency. People can be misled when they don’t know who is altering content and what content has been changed. The ability to provide proper content attribution for creators and publishers is critical to ensure trust and transparency online.

Our heritage at Adobe is built on trusted creative solutions. Empowering creativity is in our DNA. And we feel it’s our responsibility to play a leading role in addressing content authenticity in this next era of digital content.

A long-term, holistic solution is needed in order to provide consumers with information and tools to help them decide who and what to trust. We think attribution is a critical part of the solution as it will enable creators to identify themselves and the modification level of their media.

What is the CAI?

Adobe, The New York Times Company and Twitter believe that addressing content authenticity to empower consumers is a shared responsibility among creators, technology and media companies, and that joining forces will accelerate progress.

We have a technical team at Adobe exploring a high-level framework architecture based on our vision of attribution, and we are inviting input and feedback from industry partners to help shape the final solution. The goal of the Initiative is for each member to bring its deep technical and business knowledge to the solution. Success will mean building a growing ecosystem of members who are contributing to a long-term solution, adoption of the framework and supporting consumers to understand who and what to trust.

Getting Involved

We are inviting other companies to join and contribute to the CAI working group. Along with The New York Times Company and Twitter, we plan to kick off the initiative at a summit along with a larger group of technology and media companies in the coming months. Our vision for the attribution framework is to be open and extensible so that any company may implement it within their respective products and services.

Education is also a critical component of the digital integrity solution. The initiative is committed to education efforts to help consumers better understand and evaluate digital media. The partners will work together to improve consumers’ media literacy awareness and skills.

As our announcement today illustrates, creating a long-term solution is a shared responsibility among creators, technology and media companies. We believe that joining efforts will accelerate progress for the creative community and society at large, and are committed to doing our part to upholding digital integrity.

Companies interested in learning more about the Content Authenticity Initiative can contact contentauthenticity@adobe.com.