Adobe announces new, free tool to help creators manage digital IP attribution and protection

Adobe has been championing content authenticity for years, being a founding member of the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) in 2019 and the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), from which the open-source standard for Content Credentials come from. Content Credentials is a way for content creators to embed authenticity metadata into digital works to prove authorship and originality, as well as provide transparency on how said content was created or modified. The CAI has more than 3,000 members now across media and technology companies, and Content Credentials have started to see more mainstream adoption. For example, Leica has a camera that embeds Content Credentials into every image it takes. Sony has also announced similar plans.

To this end, Adobe has just announced a new, and completely free-to-use Content Authenticity web tool that would make it even easier for creators to add and manage Content Credentials of their original work. The tool will also introduce Durable Content Credentials, which will include invisible watermarking and digital fingerprinting in addition to cryptographically-signed metadata to ensure that your work can be traced back to you. Even if someone tries to remove information such as taking a screenshot or a photo of a photo, the invisible watermark will have sufficient information to retrieve embedded Content Credentials.

This tool also has a unique feature that will allow users to tag their work to be excluded from being used by AI inferencing and training. With Gen AI on the rise, content creators who often see their work or style being copied in derivative Gen AI output will probably welcome such a feature. Of course, the AI model must first support such a tag, but at least it’s a step forward in the right direction. Adobe’s own Firefly model will comply with these preferences, and Adobe Stock will not accept the uploading and sharing of content that’s tagged.

Since the Content Authenticity tool is free for all, we asked Adobe how they planned to limit its potential abuse, as it also becomes easier for anyone to falsely claim authorship or various digital works. While Adobe acknowledges there will always be bad actors, there are existing systems in place such as verified accounts to prove one’s identity or body of work before being able to use the tool and add Content Credentials. Other forms of identity verification such as phone numbers and government-issued documentation are also being planned.

The Content Authenticity web app is currently in beta, and you can join the waitlist for early access. Adobe expects the tool to be publicly available in Q1 2025.

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