The growing popularity of generative AI image generators has created a two-pronged problem: Creators struggle to protect their work from being used to train the models, while the rest of us struggle to distinguish between what’s real and what’s generated. Adobe’s Content Authenticity app seeks to solve the issue on both fronts.
On Thursday, Adobe announced its free Adobe Content Authenticity app would be available as a public beta. With the app, creators can apply Content Credentials, a secure type of cryptographic metadata that includes the content’s vital ingredients, such as the creator’s name, time, date created, and tools used in their work.
How do Content Credentials protect creators?
Adobe’s Content Credentials stay throughout the entire lifecycle of the work, even if a screenshot of the content is taken, giving creators the peace of mind that their content will always be properly attributed. The creator is in complete control of what is attached to their digital work, including their verified name, which is confirmed through LinkedIn or links to social media accounts.
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Another important element is being able to delineate whether you, as a creator, want your work used in generating AI training and usage. Most generative AI text-to-image models are trained by scraping the web for all of its visual content, which means that an artist’s work can then be reproduced in other works by future users of the image generator.
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With Content Credentials, users can only signal their preferences. Even though some companies may choose to ignore the signal, the hope is that they will take into account the creator’s wishes. Since Content Credentials stay with the work forever, as legislation around the matter evolves and opt-out regulations are deployed, the user preference may come into play.
How to apply Content Credentials to images?
Using the Adobe Content Authentic app, adding Content Credentials is as easy and intuitive as adding regular metadata. Most importantly, users can batch-apply Content Credentials to up to 50 JPG or PNG files at a time, regardless of whether they were made with Adobe apps or not.
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To double-check an image’s authenticity and learn more about its Content Credentials, you can use the Inspect tool within the Adobe Content Credentials web application or the Content Authenticity extension for Google Chrome. The process is as easy as dragging and dropping the content you want to learn more about. Then the app will immediately tell you if Content Credentials were found or if there were any matches online.
Future plans
Adobe says it is working toward support for larger file sizes and more media types, such as video and audio. The broader plan is to integrate the Creative Cloud apps, such as Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom, with the Content Authenticity app to create one hub for managing Content Credentials across different apps.
Lastly, LinkedIn will expand its support for Content Credentials in the upcoming months by including the credentials applied on the Content Authenticity app on its platform. As seen in the image above, photos uploaded with Content Credentials will appear with a “Cr” pin, which a user can then scroll over to view the details, such as the creator’s name.
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