Transparency and Trust

A standards body fighting against misinformation and media manipulation is building an evolving toolkit which can be used “as a Swiss Army knife,” according to its chair.

In the new episode of the Making the Media Podcast, Andrew Jenks, chair of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), tells host Craig Wilson of the work of the organization and how it is having to rapidly evolve to deal with emerging challenges.

The C2PA is an organization which is attempting to address the issue of media provenance by developing technical standards which the industry can use to verify content. It is supported by major tech companies and media organizations such as Microsoft, Meta, Google, Adobe, the BBC, Amazon, Sony, and others. Avid is a member of the C2PA.

As well as being chair of the organization, Andrew heads up Microsoft’s efforts around content provenance and in the episode, he discusses the C2PA’s work to review and update frequently the technical standards, as well as encouraging more organizations to get involved. One of the major challenges is now the evolution of generative AI.

In the episode, Andrew says, “The question we're trying to answer is no longer ‘Was this created by AI or not?’ That question is passe. The question is ‘Which parts of this image were altered by AI? In what way, at what point in the workflow?’ And you just need a different vernacular for that. And so, we are doing our level best to keep up with the developments in the industry and predict what is coming down the pipeline. But this is an area where I think we, as a media ecosystem, need to invest more. Like we're going to need a new vernacular, a new set of language for talking about AI edits in the process of media creation that we just don't have today.”

Andrew acknowledges that part of the issue around content provenance is one of education. The audience needs to be made aware of the validity of what they are watching and have the information they need to make decisions around trusted content. But there is also a need to inform more people working within the media industry about what C2PA is, beyond those on the technical side of the business. He adds, “The story we tell differs depending on the audience that we're talking to, right? Technical audience understands that this is a security enhancement. Marketing audience understands that this is a brand protection enhancement. Journalist audience understands that this is a way of transporting attribution with the material that they create. The interesting thing about C2PA is that it's a Swiss army knife, man. It's an underlying technology that enables a bunch of scenarios that are really helpful kind of across the board.”

Find out more in the new episode of the Making the Media podcast, available on all major podcast platforms on Friday, December 13.