Definition — An open provenance standard from the C2PA coalition that attaches cryptographically signed metadata to media, recording how it was created and edited — including whether AI was involved.
Content Credentials are best understood as a signed history label for media: a tamper-evident metadata manifest, cryptographically signed at creation, recording what produced the file and what was done to it. Developed by the C2PA coalition (an industry group spanning camera makers, software vendors and platforms), it is the closest thing provenance has to an open standard.
For AI content the relevant field is provenance of generation: a C2PA manifest can assert that an image was AI-generated, which platforms can read to apply their AI labels automatically. This is the machine-readable layer of the disclosure stack — regulation pushes toward machine-readable marking, and Content Credentials are the leading implementation. See how platforms consume these signals.
The honest limitation is survivability: metadata can be stripped by screenshots, re-encoding and many upload pipelines, so an absent manifest proves nothing. Content Credentials therefore complement — never replace — visible disclosure on the account and platform labels on the post.
Frequently asked questions
A visible or invisible mark embedded in media to identify its origin or signal how it may be used. In AI tools, visible watermarks typically mark free-tier or evaluation exports; invisible marks carry machine-readable provenance.
A platform-native marker telling viewers a post is AI-generated or significantly AI-edited. Major platforms combine self-declaration at upload with automatic labeling based on provenance metadata.
Any media (images, video, audio) generated or substantially modified by AI rather than captured from reality. Regulations such as the EU AI Act attach transparency obligations to synthetic media that depicts realistic people.
The European Union's AI regulation. For AI-generated content, its transparency rules are what matter: synthetic images, video and audio must be disclosed to viewers, and outputs must be marked as AI-generated in a machine-readable way.
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