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It is quite challenging to verify the origin of online content. In this era of disinformation exacerbated by ever-evolving AI tools, the creation of seemingly authentic fake accounts and content can be quite dangerous, with risks ranging from harming one’s reputation to damaging society as a whole. Fortunately, content provenance technologies are emerging to fight this problem. The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) is the leading effort allowing creators to cryptographically sign their digital assets and record subsequent edits helping consumers to confirm their origin and authenticity while keeping an auditable history of the data transformations. It has been adopted by leading technology providers (Microsoft, Google, Meta), camera manufacturers (Sony, Nikon), image/video editors (Adobe), generative AI companies (OpenAI, Midjourney), and news organizations (BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, New York Times). C2PA is also at the forefront of the fight against election disinformation, and was one of two technologies mentioned in the recent AI Elections accord signed at the Munich security conference. In this presentation, I’ll describe the C2PA use cases, specifications, and the lifecycle of a protected digital asset (such as images, videos, and audio clips) from their creation, to their modifications and validation. I’ll present open-source tools/SDKs that anyone can use to create and verify protected content or integrate this functionality in their applications and services. I’ll also present the Cross-Platform Origin of Content (XPOC) framework allowing content owners to create authoritative lists of their social media accounts and content, addressing a slightly different provenance problem. I’ll give a demonstration of the open-source tools allowing anyone to self-host and verify XPOC manifests.
Christian Paquin Principal Research Software Engineer, Microsoft Research
Christian is a security specialist in the Microsoft Research Cryptography team with a mission to bridge the gap between academic research and real-world systems. With 25 years of experience, Christian has been involved in many industry-wide initiatives such as the development of privacy enhancing identity technologies (such as anonymous credentials), the ongoing post-quantum cryptographic migration, and the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) to fight online disinformation. Christian shares some of his work results on his blog: https://christianpaquin.github.io