As AI-generated and edited media become harder to distinguish by eye, C2PA Content Credentials offer a different approach: instead of guessing whether something is real, they record a signed, tamper-evident history of where a file came from and how it was changed. This interactive explainer breaks the standard down into plain language.
How it works
C2PA — the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity — defines a “manifest” that travels with an image or video. The manifest holds “assertions”: verifiable statements such as the capture device, the editing software, the date, and whether AI was involved. The whole manifest is cryptographically signed, so any later change to the pixels breaks the signature and becomes detectable.
The explainer walks through six topics you can expand in any order: what C2PA is, what a manifest stores, how it is embedded in a file, how to verify it, what its limitations are, and which creation, platform, and verification tools support it today.
Tips and notes
The single most important thing to understand is what a valid credential does and does not prove. A passing signature means the file has not changed since signing — it does not mean the signer is honest, and it does not mean files without credentials are fake. Most media today simply carries no manifest at all.
When you verify something, look past the green checkmark to the signer’s identity and the recorded edit chain. A credential signed by a recognised camera maker or editing tool carries weight; an unknown signer’s accurate-looking claims do not. Used this way, Content Credentials are a useful provenance signal rather than a lie detector.