The importance of content authenticity has become a hot topic in the identity space, as it touches end-user identity, enterprise identity, asset identity and regulatory oversight. With digital credentials being issued by both governments and online entities, the next question is how content creators and media outlets assure the authenticity of content with or without recourse to those central foundations. AI and Deep Fakes abound, and it’s become difficult for consumers to tell the difference between a real eyewitness account and a manufactured account. Simultaneously, creatives and professional organizations are concerned about getting credit and compensation for their intellectual property. Five independent organizations collaborate to define and support the content authenticity ecosystem, including Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), the Creator Assertions Working Group (CAWG), and the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) . Quite rapidly, these teams recognized that there will not be “one authentication protocol to rule them all” and have settled on a hybrid approach which accepts a variety of authentication methods for individuals and a variety of data inputs, while setting clear industry standards for hardware and software manufacturers to build in content manifests and ownership assertions. This agnostic approach is a breakthrough in giving the content creators the power to determine for themselves what entities they trust for digital identification credentials usecase by usecase, and offers an open-world approach to wallet developers.
