The CAI’s 2022 Year in Review
As we close out this third year at the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), we want to spotlight the fast-growing CAI community that is leading responsible innovation and implementing the technical standard for restoring trust and transparency through digital content provenance. The urgency to address mis- and disinformation, facilitate transparency and creator attribution online has become even more critical with the speed of developments in generative artificial intelligence.
Into 2023, we’re furthering our commitment by incorporating CAI technology into Adobe creative tools and collaborating closely with the CAI members deploying offerings in generative AI. More to come on this.
Launching a standard and ecosystem for transparency online
We started 2022 with the launch of technical standards and supporting guidance from the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), an alliance that Adobe leads alongside Arm, Intel, BBC, Microsoft, Sony and Truepic. These standards are the foundation for certifying and displaying the provenance or source and history of media content.
In June, the CAI team released a suite of open-source tools, enabling a broad developer community to integrate the C2PA technical standards across web, desktop, hardware, mobile projects and more—regardless of their level of technical depth. We’re so thrilled to see community adoption, experimentation and feedback that’s critical to progress and wide adoption.
Since the release, the content provenance ecosystem has seen new and exciting implementation like that of Pixelstream, a provenance-based platform and system for sharing and delivery of authentic media. At Adobe MAX, we announced partnerships with Leica and Nikon. The industry leading camera manufacturers showcased exhibiting cameras—Leica's iconic M11 Rangefinder and Nikon’s industry-leading mirrorless Z9—with provenance technology. The milestone brings authenticity to digital images at the point of capture, equipping photographers and creators alike with attribution tools.
We also announced improvements to Content Credentials in Adobe Photoshop, which we launched in 2021 to allow users to add their attribution details to their exported images. Enhanced support for a range of actions including working with smart objects and new global settings to keep content credentials on by default or at the document level brings flexibility to any creative workflow.
At Adobe MAX this year, Scott Belsky, CPO and EVP for Creative Cloud, announced CAI milestones with Leica and Nikon.
Content provenance for audiences everywhere
When false narratives or misleading information go viral, we often “Google” to compare coverage and cross-check available information. This common behavior and digital provenance history drive Verify, the CAI website where anyone can upload an image to trace the history and edits made to a piece of digital content. This year, we updated Verify to support matching and recovery of provenance and attribution history in files exported with content credentials, ensuring CAI metadata is permanently associated to your content.
We welcomed many new CAI members this year—leading publishers and visual content providers including the Associated Press, Agencia EFE, El Tiempo, EPA Images, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal to name a few. Our growing global community of more than 860 members includes creative professionals, civil society, academics, media and technology companies implementing and promoting adoption of content authenticity standards online. Consider joining us.
Meeting online consumers and digital creators where they are is fundamental to the CAI’s mission—realized through open-source tools and cross-industry collaboration.
A commitment to provenance and the C2PA standard
This year also included significant policy collaboration and developments in Europe and the United States.
In June, we achieved a milestone of collaborating with the European Commission’s 2022 Code of Practice on Disinformation, the first international code to specifically include commitments on provenance and the C2PA standard. The code aims to encourage adoption by signatories which include Adobe, Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok and others.
An Adobe sponsored bill in the State of California will establish a Deepfake Working Group to study the risks and impact of digitally altered media while exploring the adoption of content provenance as a solution to identify deepfakes.
The CAI team also spoke at a number of policy events internationally, including a policy workshop at the Royal Society in London in September. This event was a deep dive into the recommendation from its report on disinformation on provenance technology (pp.16) where Andy Parsons, Sr. Director at the CAI, addressed an audience of ~50 stakeholders from academia, technology and policy alongside CAI and C2PA member, the BBC. We’ll share the learnings from this workshop when it’s published in early 2023.
"Addressing the issue of content authenticity at scale is a long-term, interdisciplinary, collaborative mission," Andy said. "And it is more essential than ever before with the arrival of mainstream generative AI. This coming year is set to bring deeper collaboration, wider adoption and new innovation in the provenance community. 2022 was a year of critical foundation-building for us and I see 2023 as the year of utility and adoption, built upon that foundation."
We’re so excited for the year ahead, continuing to co-create an ecosystem built on trust and grounded in open technologies that enable creator attribution and digital transparency.