5–Year anniversary of the Content Authenticity Initiative: What it means and what’s ahead?

Five years ago, at Adobe MAX 2019, we co-founded the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) with the goal of fostering greater trust and transparency online. Even then, we recognized the emerging risks posed by manipulations, deepfakes, and AI-generated content. We understood that both creators and consumers would need a reliable way to trace the origins of digital content, enabling informed decisions about its credibility. At the time, generative AI as we know it today didn't exist, and efforts to combat deepfakes were focused solely on detection. Though our coalition started small, we were driven by the belief in a global provenance standard that would build a more trustworthy digital ecosystem, supporting both attribution and authenticity.

The year of mainstream momentum + awareness

Fast forward to today, at Adobe MAX 2024, and I couldn’t be more heartened to see how far we’ve come and how much we’ve learned over these past five years.

Our coalition has grown to more than 3,700 members today consisting of major industry players, including global social media platforms, generative AI platforms, news organizations, major tech companies, all “Big Five” camera manufacturers, civil society, non-profits and many more. We’ve partnered across the tech industry as co-creators of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) global standards organization to develop the most comprehensive solution for transparency and labeling digital content. This technology is Content Credentials, which act like a “nutrition label” for digital content. We’re seeing increased adoption and mainstream implementation of Content Credentials almost weekly now from both the public and private sectors, including this year alone — Google, TikTok, OpenAI, Meta, LinkedIn, Amazon, Sony and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) for its images hosted on DVIDS.

And at Adobe MAX today, we shared more on our continued plans to integrate Content Credentials across our own product, including video in Adobe Premiere Pro, where Content Credentials will be applied to features powered by the new Firefly video model, including Generative Extend and Text to Video, and to other select Firefly-powered editing features across Adobe Creative Cloud to indicate the use of generative AI. We’re also continuing to build on our integration of Content Credentials in popular Creative Cloud apps like Photoshop and Illustrator — all part our ongoing commitment to responsible innovation across our products. While transparency for generative AI is critical in many contexts, we remain steadfast to ensure that authentic content, verifiably recording real-world events and fueling authentic storytelling are discernable anywhere.

We are thrilled by the success we’ve had to date, but our work doesn’t stop here. We know Content Credentials are not a silver bullet — they are a critical tool in restoring trust online, but we all have a role to play beyond the technology and its adoption. We must invest in a new type of media literacy, so people can maintain a healthy level of awareness, and at times skepticism of digital content, as deepfakes are part of our daily lives, but also build awareness of the tools available to learn more context about content online, to avoid being deceived. And while around the world and in the U.S. we’re beginning to see early progress in the public sector — we need to continue to raise awareness among policymakers, who have a critical role to play here, ensuring provenance requirements are included in legislative proposals, including for AI developers to build provenance into their tools and for platforms to carry and display it.

We believe more than ever that widespread adoption of Content Credentials will play a vital role in realizing this wider vision of a more trustworthy and transparent digital ecosystem in the months and years to come. And so, I’d like to share a little more about how our recently announced Adobe Content Authenticity web app works and how it fits into the bigger picture.

Adobe’s continued commitment to creators with Content Credentials

As part of our commitment to responsible innovation at Adobe, we have been dedicated to protecting and empowering creators and ensuring they gain attribution for their work. This work has grown more urgent in the age of generative AI, and we recently asked creative professionals their latest thoughts, concerns and evolving relationship with the technology. Creators were clear, as 91 percent said they want a reliable way to attach attribution to their work.

This is exactly why last week we announced Adobe Content Authenticity, a new, free web app that allows creators to easily attach Content Credentials to their digital work — helping them protect and receive attribution for their work. This is a major milestone as we unlock the full potential of Content Credentials, particularly for our creative community, who has been impacted by the rapid rise of generative AI and needs help protecting their work from misuse and misrepresentation.

This sort of empowerment is precisely why we created Content Credentials, so that creators everywhere can have more control over their work, receive attribution by signing it and even signal if they do not want their content used by or to train other generative AI models in the market. With the upcoming launch of the web app, we’re putting that power more squarely in the hands of creators everywhere.

Content Authenticity web app will be released as a free public beta in Q1 2025 and creators can learn more and sign up here to be notified when the beta is available. I’m also thrilled to be on the ground with my team demoing the web app at Adobe MAX (booth 424).

An interoperable future

This past year was a watershed moment as social media platforms, generative AI companies and camera manufacturers reinforced the value of Content Credentials by joining our efforts, and more importantly — beginning to implement the provenance and transparency solution. We’ve moved a step closer to a future in which interoperable provenance tools and technologies work seamlessly together across the digital ecosystem — enhancing trust and transparency online.

However, we recognize that in order for this solution to really work, we need consistent and effective implementation. Interoperability is baked into everything we do and ensuring products across companies work well together remains an intense and complex task. We are lucky to have the best designers and product experts working on this in the C2PA, and we are hyper-focused on collaborating across industries and with other companies to refine the interoperable capabilities of Content Credentials and ensure the best (and most effective) user experience possible for consumers.

Looking ahead to the next 5 years

In five years, we’re extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished. It’s historically unprecedented speed for a standard to be devised, published, adopted internationally, and implemented broadly in such a short timeframe. And now, Content Credentials are mature enough to be embraced by notable world standards organizations, like the World Standard Corporation and are on track for adoption as an ISO standard, the global standard for trusted goods and services. Every day I have conversations with prospective and current partners around the globe who see this real societal problem, evolving every day, and the need to handle it with urgency, dedication and care. We are all aligned on the need to put a foundation of digital provenance in place through Content Credentials, and it is inspiring to see it becoming broader, better, and more available day by day. It is a privilege to do this work with incredibly talented engineers, product managers, designers, researchers, and thought leaders in policy. We are part of something that will have a meaningful impact on all of our lives, for generations.

We recognize there is a long journey ahead — one that will be as challenging as it is rewarding — but I am nevertheless optimistic about the future and the power of Content Credentials. With continued hard work and deep collaboration across companies and borders, I am hopeful and excited for all that is to come in the quest for a more trustworthy, transparent, and fair digital ecosystem.