Media consultant and IPTC Individual Member Denise Durand Kremer gave a presentation on IPTC Photo Metadata at the Seminário Fototeca Brasileira – the Brazilian Photo Library Seminar.

Over three days, more than 80 people got together to discuss the idea of a national photo library for Brazil. Denise was invited by the Collection and Market group Acervo e Mercado to talk about her experience as an iconographic researcher and about the IPTC standard for photographic metadata.

Photographers, teachers, researchers, archivists and public managers from institutions such as the Museu da Imagem e do Som de São Paulo – MIS (Museum of Image and Sound of São Paulo), Funarte, Instituto Moreira Salles, Zumví and Arquivo Afro Fotográfico participated in the event.

The meeting ended with a commitment from the Executive Secretary of the Ministry of Culture, to set up a working group to take the idea forward.

The seminar was recorded and will be available on SescTV.

Thanks very much Denise for spreading the word about IPTC standards in Brazil!

Last week CEPIC, the “centre of the picture industry”, held its annual Congress in Juan-les-Pins in France. This was the second time that the event was held at the Palais du Congres in Juan-les-Pins near Antibes, which is proving to be a great venue for the Congress with many repeat visitors who also attended last year.

IPTC was well represented at the event, with Managing Director Brendan Quinn presenting on two panels and many other IPTC members involved in presentations, panels or simply attending the event. IPTC members either presenting or in attendance included Google, Shutterstock, Getty Images, ANSA, IMATAG, PA Media / Alamy, TT, dpa, Adobe, Xinhua, Activo, APA, European Pressphoto Agency EPA and possibly more that we have missed!

One of the highlights for us was the Provenance and AI panel moderated by Anna Dickson, who until recently was with Google but is now with another IPTC member, Shutterstock. Presenters on this panel included Katharina Familia Almonte, product manager at Google, Andy Parsons, Director of the Content Authenticity Initiative  (although Brendan ended up presenting his slides due to it being 4.30am for Andy in New York at the time!); Mathieu Desoubeaux, CEO of IPTC startup member IMATAG, and Brendan Quinn, Managing Director of IPTC.

Brendan used the opportunity to introduce the IPTC Media Provenance Committee and the work that the IPTC is doing on creating a C2PA Trust List for media organisations. Brendan put out a call for other media organisations who may be interested in joining the next cohort of certificate holders who will be able to obtain a certificate stored on the trust list and use it to cryptographically sign their media content. The discussion went on to look at the issues around using both C2PA and watermarking technology to protect image content.

Later in the day was the panel “Where Law and Technology Meet.” Moderated by Lars Modie (CEPIC, previously of IBL Bildbyrå / TT in Swededn) with speakers: Serguei Fomin (IQPlug, IPTC CEPIC representative), Brendan Quinn (IPTC), Franck Bardol (University of Geneva), Nancy Wolff (partner at the intellectual property, media and entertainment law firm of Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard, LLP and DMLA counsel) and Katherine Briggs of Australian agency Envato which was recently acquired by Shutterstock.

At this panel, Brendan outlined IPTC’s recent guidance on metadata for generative AI images. This includes the Digital Source Type property but also guidance on using the Creator, Contributor, and Data Mining properties to signal ownership and rights licensing information associated with images, particularly for engines that “scrape” web content to train generative AI models.

Many stimulating conversations always make the CEPIC Congress a valuable event for us to attend, and we are already looking forward to next year’s instalment.

Tuesday’s IPTC Photo Metadata Conference was a great success. With 12 speakers from the media and software industries and over 200 people registered, it continues to be the largest gathering of photo and image metadata experts globally.

Introduction and welcome, 20 years of IPTC Photo Metadata, Recent work on Photo Metadata at IPTC

We started off with David Riecks and Michael Steidl, co-leads of the IPTC Photo Metadata Working Group, giving an update on what the IPTC has been working on in the areas of photo metadata since the last conference in 2022, along with Brendan Quinn, IPTC Managing Director.

A lot has been happening, including Meta announcing support for IPTC metadata for Generative AI,  launching the IPTC Media Provenance Committee and updating the IPTC Photo Metadata User Guide, including our guidance for how to tag Generative AI content with metadata and how to use the DigitalSourceType field.

Panel 1: AI and Image Authenticity

The first panel saw Leonard Rosenthol of Adobe, Lead of the C2PA Technical Working Group; Dennis Walker of Camera Bits, creators of Photo Mechanic; Dr. Neal Krawetz, Computer security specialist, forensic researcher, and founder of FotoForensics; and Bofu Chen, Founder & CTO of Numbers Protocol speak about image provenance and authenticity, covering the C2PA spec, the problems of fraudulent images, what it’s like to implement C2PA technology in existing software, and how blockchain-based systems could be built on top of C2PA to potentially extend its capabilities.

Session on Adobe’s Custom Metadata Panel

James Lockman, Group Manager, Digital Media Services at Adobe demonstrated the Custom Metadata Panel plugin for some Adobe tools (Bridge, Illustrator, Photoshop and Premiere Pro) that allows the full range of IPTC Photo Metadata Standard and IPTC Video Metadata Hub, or any other metadata schema, to be edited directly in Adobe’s interface.

Panel 2: AI-powered asset management

Speakers  Nancy Wolff, Partner at Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard, LLP; Serguei Fomine, Founder and CEO of IQPlug; Jeff Nova, Chief Executive Officer at Colorhythm and Mark Milstein, co-founder and Director of Business Development at vAIsual discussed the impact of AI on copyright, metadata and media asset management.

The full event recording is also available as a YouTube playlist.

Thanks to everyone for coming and especial thanks to our speakers. We’re already looking forward to next year!