Google has announced the launch of its latest phone in the Pixel series, including support for IPTC Digital Source Type in its industry-leading C2PA implementation.

Many existing C2PA implementations focus on signalling AI-generated content, adding the IPTC Digital Source Type of “Generated by AI” to content that has been created by a trained model.

Google’s implementation in the new Pixel 10 phone differs by adding a Digital Source Type to every image created using the phone, using the “computational capture” Digital Source Type to denote photos taken by the phone’s camera. In addition, images edited using the phone’s AI manipulation tools show the “Edited using Generative AI” value in the Digital Source Type field.

Note that the Digital Source Type information is added using the “C2PA Actions” assertion in the C2PA manifest; unfortunately it is not yet added to the regular IPTC metadata section in the  XMP metadata packet. So it can only be read by C2PA-compatible tools.

Background: what is “Computational Capture”?

The IPTC added Computational Capture as a new term in the Digital Source Type vocabulary in September 2024. It represents a “digital capture” that does involve some extra work using an algorithm, as opposed to simply recording the encoded sample hitting the phone sensor, as with simple digital cameras.

For example, a modern smartphone doesn’t simply take one photo when you press the shutter button. Usually the phone captures several images from the phone sensor using different exposure levels and then an algorithm merges them together to create a visually improved image.

This of course is very different from a photo that was created by AI or even one that was edited by AI at a human’s instruction, so we wanted to be able to capture this use case. Therefore we introduced the term “computational capture”.

For more information and examples, see the Digital Source Type guidance in the IPTC Photo Metadata User Guide.

The IPTC Photo Metadata Working Group is proposing a draft set of properties for recording details of images created using generative AI systems. The group presents a draft of these fields for your comments and feedback. After comments are reviewed the group intends to add new properties to a new version of the IPTC Photo Metadata Standard which would be released later in 2025.

Use Cases

The proposals detailed here are intended to address these scenarios, among others:

• How do you know which system/model generated this image? For instance, if you wanted to compare how different systems—or versions of systems—interpret a given prompt, where would you look?
• How can you know what prompt text was entered, or image shared as a starting point? If you want to recreate similar images in the future with the same look, where should that info be stored?
• How can you tell who was involved in the creation of a generative AI image? 

Example Scenario

You are the new designer for an organisation, and need to create an image for a monthly column. You are told to use generative AI, but your boss wants the end result to have the same “look and feel” as images used previously in the column. If you needed to find those that were published previously—what information would be most useful in locating and retrieving the image(s) in your organization’s image collection?

Proposed Properties:

• AI Model
  Name: AI Model
  Definition: The foundational model name and version used to generate this image.
  User Note: For example “DALL-E 2”, “Google Genesis 1.5 Pro”
  Basic Specs: Data type: Text / Cardinality: 0..1

• AI Text Prompt Description
  Name: AI Text Prompt Description
  Definition: The information that was given to the generative AI service as “prompt(s)” in order to generate this image.
  User Note: This may include negative [excludes] and positive [includes] statements in the prompt.
  Basic Specs: Data type: Text / Cardinality: 0..1

• AI Prompt Writer Name
  Name: AI Prompt Writer Name
  Definition: Name of the person who wrote the prompt used for generating this image.
  Basic Specs: Data type: Text / Cardinality: 0..1

• Reference Image(s)
  Name: Reference Image
  Definition: Image(s) used as a starting point to be refined by the generative AI system (sometimes referred to as “base image”).
  Basic Specs: Data type: URI / Cardinality: 0..unbounded

All of these properties are of course optional, not required, but we would recommend that AI engines fill in the properties whenever possible.

Request for Comment

The intent is for a new standard version including these fields to be proposed at the IPTC Autumn Meeting 2025 in October to be voted on by IPTC member organisations. If approved by members, the new version would be published in November 2025.

Please send your comments or suggestions for improvements using the IPTC Contact Us form or via a post to the public iptc-photometadata@groups.io discussion list by Friday 29th August 2025.