Introducing Adobe Content Authenticity: A free web app to help creators protect their work, gain attribution and build trust
In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, creators are understandably concerned about safeguarding and gaining attribution for their work and having more control over how it’s used. Adobe has a long history of supporting the creative community, with tools and services that empower creative endeavors.
That’s why we’re excited to introduce Adobe Content Authenticity, a new, free web app that allows creators to easily attach Content Credentials to their digital work — helping you protect your work, show attribution and better connect with your audiences online. Content Credentials are like a “nutrition label” and serve as secure metadata that can help you share information about yourself and your work. Just as a painter might add their signature to their painting, applying Content Credentials to your work with the web app is like signing your work in the digital world.
Adding information about yourself to your work with Content Credentials can help ensure that once it’s shared online, it can be traced back to you. It’s a way to both protect your work and provide more transparency by helping people who come across your content discover more of what you’ve created and learn about your work through your social media and website.
With the web app, you can also select a Generative AI Training and Usage Preference to influence how generative AI models from other companies use your work. Adding this preference indicates to other supporting generative AI models that you don’t want your work to be trained on or used.
At Adobe, we believe that transparency in digital content is paramount to fostering a more trustworthy digital ecosystem. We founded the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) in 2019, which has since grown to 3,700 members — all committed to promoting widespread adoption of Content Credentials. Now, with the Content Authenticity web app, we’re thrilled to expand on this work and bring Content Credentials to creators everywhere.
Create and manage Content Credentials with Adobe Content Authenticity
Here’s a look at the key features in the Content Authenticity web app:
- Easily batch-apply Content Credentials to connect information about yourself to your content. Whether created with Creative Cloud apps or not, you can apply Content Credentials to your digital work, including images, audio and video files, and have control over the information that is included. This can include your verified name or identity, website and social media accounts, including Behance, Instagram, LinkedIn and X, and we’re working to add more customizable options. With this feature, applying Content Credentials to multiple files at a time becomes a breeze.
- Set a preference around generative AI training and usage. While Adobe Firefly is only trained on content we have permission to use — never on customer content, not all other generative AI models follow this approach. With the Generative AI Training and Usage Preference in the web app, you use Content Credentials to signals that you do not want other generative AI models in the market to use or train on your content. Spawning, an AI opt-out aggregator, has committed to recognizing this preference, and we’re actively working to drive industry-wide adoption for this feature. You can expect to hear more from us on this in the future.
- It’s important to note that if you apply this preference, it won’t be eligible for submission to Adobe Stock. This is because Adobe trains Firefly on licensed Adobe Stock content and this preference helps ensure that we’re respecting your choice about how you want your content to be used. Learn more here.
- Setting this preference also prevents others from using your work on select Adobe Firefly-powered features like Style Reference, Structure Reference, and Generate Similar. This is because although these tools don’t train on your content, they use generative inference technology to influence the outcome and the output.
To help people discover and view the Content Credentials that you apply to your files, we’re also releasing additional tools as a part of our commitment to expanding transparency online with Content Credentials:
- View Content Credentials anywhere with the Content Authenticity extension for Google Chrome. Content Credentials are an industry standard that are still rolling out and some social media platforms and websites today remove this type of metadata while resizing or rendering content to be posted online. To bridge this gap, we’re releasing the Content Authenticity extension for Google Chrome . By installing this extension, you’ll be able to see and interact with Content Credentials wherever they are present online. Be sure to add the Google Chrome extension once it’s available after October 8.
- See a detailed history with the Inspect tool. When you drop a file with Content Credentials attached into the new Inspect tool, you’ll be able to see a comprehensive view of the information available. For example, if you take a photo with a Leica M11-P that embeds Content Credentials at the point of capture, edit it with Adobe Photoshop while opting to include Content Credentials, and then upload the final work to the Content Authenticity web app to “sign” it and add the generative AI preference, all these Content Credentials become viewable in the Inspect tool.
- Sign your work with Content Credentials that are durable. Content Credentials that you apply with the web app are durable and persistent. Leveraging a combination of secure metadata, invisible watermarks, and digital fingerprinting technology, your Content Credentials will remain connected to your work even if the metadata is removed or if someone takes a screenshot.
An app designed for creators and by creators
The idea to build the Content Authenticity web app was sparked through many conversations with our creative community. For example, our team had many conversations with photographers who shared frustration about their work being reposted without permission, with illustrators who’ve had generative AI models train on their unique style and others. The features and experience you’ll find within Content Authenticity reflect what we’ve heard from the creators we’ve talked to, and we plan to continue these conversations as we further develop the web app. Here are some initial thoughts from members of the creator community:
“With the speed of social sharing, the images or videos you post online can be quickly taken out of context. I’ve had my images meme’d and used without permission. I’m excited about Adobe Content Authenticity because it will maintain my digital ‘signature’ wherever my files travel while helping us make informed decisions on the stories we encounter online.”
-Cheriss May, an editorial, documentary and portrait photographer covering politics and the White House in Washington. D.C.
"There’s a blanket of security I didn’t know I needed as an artist sharing online until looking into the benefits of adding Content Credentials to my art. Using Adobe Content Authenticity is like one of those ‘things I wish I knew when I started’ moments."
– Alexsey Reyes, Houston-based photographer
Learn more about Adobe Content Authenticity
The Content Authenticity web app will be available as a free public beta in Q1 2025. Our plan is to integrate Content Authenticity with Creative Cloud apps that support Content Credentials like Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom and more, ultimately becoming a centralized hub for managing your Content Credentials preferences across Adobe apps.
Learn more and join the waitlist to be notified when we’re ready for you to try out Content Authenticity. And if you’ll be at Adobe MAX in Miami Beach, be sure to come by booth 424 to preview the tool.