Adobe unleashes Content Attribution features in Photoshop and beyond at MAX 2021

Two years ago, we launched the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) to combat visual misinformation and protect creators through digital provenance. We set out to create accessible features, open technical standards, and a solid foundation for organizations across industries to use in a global effort toward a more trustworthy digital landscape.

Today, we’re excited to introduce the next step in this journey: Content Credentials, Adobe’s new way to provide and assess digital content provenance and attribution.

We’re launching Content Credentials as a beta experience to millions of Adobe creative customers, with access to several features and workflows within our key products. As these workflows continue to develop and become more common, they will ultimately provide clearer content ownership for creators and increased content transparency for viewers across the internet.

Launching on Photoshop, Stock, Behance, and beyond

CAI’s Content Credentials feature will be available to all Creative Cloud subscribers across key Adobe products and workflows:

• Capturing Edits on Photoshop. Available in the Photoshop desktop app as an opt-in feature. When enabled, the feature captures edits and identity information from a working image. The creator can then attach this information to the image when exporting it. This secure metadata provides new transparency options for creative professionals and casual artists alike, while also reinforcing trust in digital content for people viewing it.

• Verify. The website where you can inspect the overview and details of an image and its Content Credentials. See here: verify.contentauthenticity.org.
• Downloading Stock Assets. Adobe Stock assets now automatically include their Content Credentials upon download. This will be displayed when imported into the Photoshop desktop app or when uploaded to the Verify website, showing the asset came from Adobe Stock.

• Connecting Social and Crypto Accounts. Users can now link their social media profiles and crypto wallet addresses to their work in the Photoshop desktop app. By adding your social media and wallet addresses to your Content Credentials you can further assure consumers that you are indeed the creator of your content. A crypto address is also useful if someone wishes to mint their work as crypto art. We’ve partnered with the NFT marketplaces KnownOrigin, OpenSea, Rarible, and SuperRare to display Content Credentials, thereby allowing collectors to see if the wallet used to create an asset was indeed the same one used to mint.
• On Behance. If an image has Content Credentials attached to it, they will now be visible when viewing that image on Behance. You will be seamlessly linked to verify.contentauthenticity.org to view more detail.

Additionally, we’re working toward release of an open-sourced developer kit for any team to integrate Content Credentials into their product. Stay tuned for more releases and updates in the coming months.

Expanding our partner ecosystem

The production of synthetic media is moving at warp speed, so providing the tools to help people navigate this scenario will be crucial across a broad range of sectors including media, politics, art and more.

Thankfully, we’re not alone in the mission to combat misinformation. In fact, we recently endorsed the National Deepfake Task Force Act with the U.S. Senate — a bill which strives to empower consumers with clear information about content they see online.

Additionally, in just two years, the CAI has expanded from three founding partners (Adobe, Twitter, and The New York Times) to more than 400 members. We’re joined by major media organizations like The Washington Post, the Gannett newspaper chain, the BBC, Agence France-Presse (AFP), Getty Images, VII Photo, and others. On the technology side, we have partnered with Arm, CameraBits, Impressions, Metaphysic.ai, Microsoft, Nikon, Qualcomm, Reface, Smartframe, Synthesia, Truepic, and Wacom — among many others.

Creating open standard technical specs (C2PA)

Earlier this year, the CAI created and implemented code with partners in working prototypes and launched a membership program to foster engagement, hold events, and lead conversations around attribution and provenance.

We also helped establish an independent standards development organization: the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA). The C2PA was created under the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit supporting, protecting and standardizing open technology efforts. After eight months, the C2PA released a draft of provenance specifications for public comment ahead of a V.1 release expected early next year. This is a major step forward in creating a robust, lasting and industry-wide standard. C2PA members include: Adobe, Arm, the BBC, Intel, Microsoft, Twitter, WITNESS, and dozens of other organizations and contributors.

Why this matters

With widely adopted standards and open systems, we can make sure organizations and products across the internet are working together to make the digital world safer, more trustworthy, and a more open place for creators and consumers alike. Tamper-proof transparency around the origins and changes to content not only benefits creative ownership, but it also allows viewers to understand more about what they’re seeing on the internet and make more informed decisions. We’re providing information about what is real — as opposed to detecting or determining what is fake — and we look forward to a future where everyone expects to see provenance accompanying digital content.

Looking ahead

We’re thrilled the first phase of our ambitious technical and product development work is being released. While we’re starting with digital images, we’re also exploring ways to expand into other parts of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite and will spend the coming year testing new digital media formats.

We realize there’s a long road ahead toward wide adoption of digital provenance. But as we mark this important milestone, we want to celebrate how far we’ve come and how eager so many people across the internet are about this work. It’s been gratifying to be on this journey with so many of our industry partners and we look forward to a future where attribution is table stakes in all digital content shared online.

As always, we welcome community feedback and engagement. You can reach us at here.

We would like to thank Andy Parsons for his contributions to this article.