What are Content Credentials (C2PA)?A signed label of how a file was made or edited, which can be stripped

What the label is, and what it is not

The Content Authenticity Initiative describes Content Credentials as verifiable metadata — a kind of nutrition label for digital content. They are built on the C2PA technical standard. Depending on the tool and what the person applying them chooses to include, they can say who produced a file, when, and which editing steps were used. Unlike ordinary EXIF or metadata, they are cryptographically signed. The CAI says that if someone changes the content or the attached credentials, that signature will no longer verify.

They can still be removed. Many apps, messengers and websites re-encode files and drop the label. Missing credentials do not mean a file is fake or AI-generated, and present credentials do not, on their own, prove who created the work or that the scene was real. SynthID is a different thing: an invisible watermark used by some Google DeepMind and partner tools, read with a matching detector. See C2PA versus SynthID versus a timestamp and the creators’ field guide to Content Credentials. You can inspect a file in your browser with the Content Credentials checker.