Google joins global coalition to bring transparency to digital content in AI era

New Delhi, Feb 9 (IANS) The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), a global standards body advancing transparency online through certifying the provenance of digital content, on Friday announced that Google has joined as a steering committee member and support Content Credentials to bring transparency to digital content in the AI era.

Google will collaborate with other steering committee members like Adobe, BBC, Intel, Microsoft, Publicis Groupe, Sony, and Truepic to develop the technical standard for Content Credentials.

Content Credentials is the C2PA’s technical standard for tamper-resistant metadata that can be attached to digital content, showing how and when the content was created or modified.

"In the critical context of this year’s global elections where the threat of misinformation looms larger than ever, the urgency to increase trust in the digital ecosystem has never been more pressing," Dana Rao, General Counsel and Chief Trust Officer, Adobe and Co-founder of the C2PA, said in a statement.

"Google’s membership will help accelerate the adoption of Content Credentials everywhere, from content creation to consumption," he added.

Additionally, Google's participation, which includes YouTube, will help increase awareness of Content Credentials as a key resource to help people understand the content they're viewing and trust the digital ecosystem.

"At Google, a critical part of our responsible approach to AI involves working with others in the industry to help increase transparency around digital content," said Laurie Richardson, VP of Trust and Safety at Google.

"It builds on our work in this space -- including Google DeepMind’s SynthID, Search’s About this Image and YouTube’s labels denoting content that is altered or synthetic -- to provide important context to people, helping them make more informed decisions," she added.

Content Credentials are essentially a “nutrition label” for digital content -- showing when a piece of content is created and modified.

Content Credentials are free, open-source technology leveraging the C2PA open technical standard that anyone can incorporate into their own products and platforms.