Championing Content Provenance: Insights from the AI Action Summit Business Day

By Ray Lansigan | February 11, 2025 | Paris, France

Content and media have the power to shape the global narrative. Given the amount of time we spend online, decisions of consequence - what we believe, who we elect, how we spend - are strongly influenced by the information that we consume from the digital ecosystem. Now that tools for creating and altering content have become ubiquitous, a new form of literacy is essential to promote the health of our digital ecosystem. Content provenance, the ability to determine the origins and history of content, is paramount. The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), a cross-industry group of companies, maintains Content Credentials, a digital global standard with pending ISO certification.

Trust and Transparency in the Age of Synthetic Media, an Open Stage Session during the Business Day at the AI Action Summit, attracted an audience of 2,000 leaders and practitioners in AI. The session featured speakers from enterprise tech, civil society, and journalism, providing diverse perspectives, but a unified call to action: implement Content Credentials across the ecosystem, then educate and build literacy around its use.

Discussion highlights:

• Meeting public demand – 93% of people surveyed in North America indicate the need to see provenance information on content that they consume.

• Mobilizing a positive global externality – Transparency has exponential benefits that transcend sovereign borders. Transparency gives users the information to decide the extent to which they can trust a piece of content. That transparency has knock-on effects beyond that single piece of content and translates to the entire, global digital ecosystem. Said another way, transparency preserves the integrity of discourse in the “public square,” while deterring those who seek to degrade it.

• A solution that is necessary, but not sufficient – While no silver bullet exists for synthetic media, Content Credentials provide a critical first line of defense that is tamper-evident, resilient, and interoperable. When combined with watermarking and fingerprinting, Content Credentials become even more durable for machine reading and human inspection.  With ISO-certification expected by Q2 2025, Content Credentials is poised for widespread adoption via market forces and network effects, but also serve as a technical benchmark for regulation.

• Swift adoption, but need for scale – In 2024, Content Credentials gained significant momentum across the digital ecosystem, with adoption by camera manufacturers, tech companies, broadcasters, publishers, and advertisers. With the theory of the case proven, the next step is to accelerate the adoption rate in attaching, reading, and displaying Content Credentials to fully realize the benefits of transparency.

• Provenance literacy, the next frontier – Concurrent to scaled adoption comes the need for Content Credentials awareness, education, and literacy. Educational programming and funding will be critical moving forward.

As we navigate the complexities of our digital landscape, the need for transparency and trust has never been more critical. Content Credentials offer a robust solution to ensure the integrity of the information we consume. Thank you France Digitale for hosting this important event and providing a forum to evangelize the adoption of Content Credentials as a means to promote a healthy digital ecosystem now and in the future.

Andy Parsons Kristen Davis Violette Spillebout Clement Wolf Amanda Craig Deckard Anthony LEVEL Eric Baradat Leonard Rosenthol Elaine Newton Esther Tetruashvily Steven Haygarth Shamima Begum