“It has never been more important to safeguard authentic news media,” say the organisers. 

“We must strengthen our voice and hold our ground against the big tech players. It is critical that the industry works together,” said Fabrice Fries, Chief Executive Officer at AFP, in his opening remarks for the workshop in Paris.

“At AFP we are committed to ensure that both news organisations and the general public can inspect the provenance of our images. This transparency builds trust,” said Eric Baradat, the global news deputy director for photo and archives at AFP.

AFP, BBC and Media Cluster Norway jointly organised the workshop, which was hosted by AFP and supported by the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC). The workshop focused on image metadata and how the C2PA standard, also known as Content Credentials, can safeguard it. 

“The challenges the news industry are facing are so great that we can only succeed if we work together. Making sure the public can discern between authentic media and content made by generative AI is vital not only for news organisations, but for democratic societies,” said Helge O. Svela, CEO of Media Cluster Norway.

More than 40 people from over 20 news organisations participated in the full day workshop. Among the presentations was a study commissioned by Media Cluster Norway’s Project Reynir on how media consumers respond to being shown more detailed information about an image. The study was conducted by MediaFutures at the University of Bergen, and built on a user study conducted by the BBC.

“Trust is earned. At the BBC we have seen that users really engage when we show them how their news was made. Extra media provenance details such as when and where an image was taken, or the steps used to verify it, make a real difference to how users trust their news. The C2PA standard can allow us to share this information with the users in a secure and trustworthy way,” said Judy Parnall, Principal Technologist, BBC Research and Development.

Among the participants in the workshop were CBC-Radio Canada, Deutsche Welle, France TV, ITV, NHK and Al Jazeera. Topics discussed included carrying provenance metadata from glass to glass versus adding it at the point of publishing, as well as the importance of redaction to the media industry and content provenance for media archives.

“It is vital that the needs of the news media ecosystem are heard as this technology and standards are further developed and refined,” said Brendan Quinn, Managing Director at IPTC.

The IPTC Media Provenance Committee works on several initiatives for implementing and furthering the development of the C2PA technology for the media industry. Many of the speakers and participants of the Paris workshop are actively involved in this work.

For more information on IPTC and the Media Provenance Committee, contact the IPTC via this site.