If you’ve been dabbling in the world of digital photo and video work over the past few years, you might have seen a term pop up a few times that seems to promise a lot, but perhaps explains little about how it works.

C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) is an organization that provides Content Credentials for various forms of media, aiming to enable content creators to ensure their content complies with standards as the digital ecosystem evolves in response to threats from AI manipulation and deepfakes.

Many of the top brands in the world in the film and video space have subscribed to this mission, including Adobe, Sony, and Canon, to name a few. But how does this quest to advance digital content transparency and authenticity actually work? Let’s explore.

What is C2PA?

C2PA stands for the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity. The goal of the C2PA is to provide an open technical standard for publishers, creators, and consumers to establish the origin and edits of digital content.

The main tool of the C2PA is called Content Credentials, which is a way to ensure that content complies with standards as the digital ecosystem evolves. This covers critical information about the content that you see online, which we often find is inaccessible or inaccurate.

Content Credentials are a new, open technology made to help reveal answers to questions about content with a single click. Questions like, how was it made? Is it AI-generated? And, when was it created or edited?

How Does C2PA Content Credentials Work?

According to the Content Credentials Organization, Content Credentials work in the following three ways:

Anytime content is captured, created, or edited, Content Credentials can be attached: Creators can choose to attach Content Credentials to their content, which might include things like whether AI was used or not. Voila! This information is added to the edit history of the content—creating a permanent record that can be confirmed.Content Credentials are viewable across the internet: Once the content is made available, anyone can view its Content Credentials by clicking the pin, which reveals the most relevant information directly in context.Go deeper to explore the full edit history: Content Credentials can capture a detailed history of changes over time. The Verify feature allows you to explore this information in depth and upload any content to see if it has Content Credentials.

To fully ensure that these Content Credentials are valid, they’ve been adopted by organizations around the world as a cross-industry community continues to build open-source tools for Content Credentials to create a more open and transparent internet.

Find Out More

As mentioned above, C2PA is more than a buzzword. And, chances are, you’re likely using gear—or could be soon—that is already incorporating Content Credentials into your photos and videos. To learn more about C2PA and see which brands are a part of the ecosystem, check out the C2PA website here.