What Are Content Credentials (C2PA)? A Plain-English Guide
Content Credentials are a kind of nutrition label for digital media. They record who or what created a piece of content and how it was edited, and they are cryptographically signed so tampering can be detected.
Who is behind C2PA?
The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) is a standards body founded by Adobe, Microsoft, the BBC, Intel and others. Members now include OpenAI, Google, Meta, Sony, Nikon, Leica and many news organisations.
How it works
When a supporting app creates or edits a file, it writes a manifest into the file. The manifest lists actions (for example "created by a generative AI model") and is signed with the app's certificate. Any later change that isn't recorded breaks the signature.
Which AI tools add Content Credentials?
- OpenAI image generation in ChatGPT and the API
- Adobe Firefly and Photoshop Generative Fill
- Microsoft Designer and Bing Image Creator
- Google's image tools (alongside its SynthID watermark)
Limitations
Credentials are metadata, so they can be removed by screenshots, re-encoding or platforms that strip metadata. Their absence proves nothing. Their presence, however, is strong evidence of how the file was produced.
How to check an image
Our AI image detector looks for C2PA manifests and reports any AI tool they name, all without uploading your file.