The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) aims to implement a new standard for online content. But what exactly is it and how does it differ from existing initiatives?

From the safety of vaccines through to the reputation of political figures and everything in between, most people will be familiar with the idea of online audiences being intentionally misled by what they see on social media and forums. But few will be familiar with the various tools and initiatives that are currently being developed to help people understand the trustworthiness of what they see online. In this article, we examine one of the latest of these, the C2PA.

What is the C2PA?

The C2PA is a coming together of some of the biggest players in the tech, creative, publishing and broadcasting industries to create an open standard for content provenance and authenticity.

Leonard Rosenthal, Chair of the C2PA Technical Working Group and Adobe’s CAI Architect, described its goal as bringing “an open standard that can be adopted anywhere in the world, in individual organizations, in individual businesses, in industry segments. We want something that is usable anywhere and everywhere. And that’s whether we’re thinking about images, videos, audio, or