At Made by Google 2025, we introduced that the brand new Google Pixel 10 telephones will help C2PA Content material Credentials in Pixel Digital camera and Google Photographs. This announcement represents a sequence of steps in the direction of higher digital media transparency:
- The Pixel 10 lineup is the primary to have Content material Credentials inbuilt throughout each picture created by Pixel Digital camera.
- The Pixel Digital camera app achieved Assurance Stage 2, the best safety ranking at present outlined by the C2PA Conformance Program. Assurance Stage 2 for a cellular app is at present solely doable on the Android platform.
- A personal-by-design method to C2PA certificates administration, the place no picture or group of photos could be associated to at least one one other or the one that created them.
- Pixel 10 telephones help on-device trusted time-stamps, which ensures photos captured along with your native digicam app could be trusted after the certificates expires, even when they had been captured when your system was offline.
These capabilities are powered by Google Tensor G5, Titan M2 safety chip, the superior hardware-backed safety features of the Android platform, and Pixel engineering experience.
On this put up, we’ll break down our architectural blueprint for bringing a brand new stage of belief to digital media, and the way builders can apply this mannequin to their very own apps on Android.
A New Method to Content material Credentials
Generative AI will help us all to be extra artistic, productive, and progressive. However it may be exhausting to inform the distinction between content material that’s been AI-generated, and content material created with out AI. The power to confirm the supply and historical past—or provenance—of digital content material is extra vital than ever.
Content material Credentials convey a wealthy set of details about how media corresponding to photos, movies, or audio recordsdata had been made, protected by the identical digital signature expertise that has secured on-line transactions and cellular apps for many years. It empowers customers to establish AI-generated (or altered) content material, serving to to foster transparency and belief in generative AI. It may be complemented by watermarking applied sciences corresponding to SynthID.
Content material Credentials are an trade commonplace backed by a broad coalition of main corporations for securely conveying the origin and historical past of media recordsdata. The usual is developed by the Coalition for Content material Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), of which Google is a steering committee member.
The normal method to classifying digital picture content material has centered on categorizing content material as “AI” vs. “not AI”. This has been the idea for a lot of legislative efforts, which have required the labeling of artificial media. This conventional method has drawbacks, as described in Chapter 5 of this seminal report by Google. Analysis exhibits that if solely artificial content material is labeled as “AI”, then customers falsely consider unlabeled content material is “not AI”, a phenomenon known as “the implied fact impact”. Because of this Google is taking a unique method to making use of C2PA Content material Credentials.
As an alternative of categorizing digital content material right into a simplistic “AI” vs. “not AI”, Pixel 10 takes the primary steps towards implementing our imaginative and prescient of categorizing digital content material as both i) media that comes with verifiable proof of the way it was made or ii) media that does not.
- Pixel Digital camera attaches Content material Credentials to any JPEG picture seize, with the suitable description as outlined by the Content material Credentials specification for every seize mode.
- Google Photographs attaches Content material Credentials to JPEG photos that have already got Content material Credentials and are edited utilizing AI or non-AI instruments, and likewise to any photos which can be edited utilizing AI instruments. It’ll validate and show Content material Credentials below a brand new part within the About panel, if the JPEG picture being considered accommodates this knowledge. Be taught extra about it in Google Photographs Assist.
Given the broad vary of situations during which Content material Credentials are hooked up by these apps, we designed our C2PA implementation structure from the onset to be:
- Safe from silicon to functions
- Verifiable, not personally identifiable
- Useable offline
Safe from Silicon to Functions
Good actors within the C2PA ecosystem are motivated to make sure that provenance knowledge is reliable. C2PA Certification Authorities (CAs), corresponding to Google, are incentivized to solely challenge certificates to real situations of apps from trusted builders so as to forestall unhealthy actors from undermining the system. Equally, app builders need to shield their C2PA declare signing keys from unauthorized use. And naturally, customers need assurance that the media recordsdata they depend on come from the place they declare. For these causes, the C2PA outlined the Conformance Program.
The Pixel Digital camera software on the Pixel 10 lineup has achieved Assurance Stage 2, the best safety ranking at present outlined by the C2PA Conformance Program. This was made doable by a robust set of hardware-backed applied sciences, together with Tensor G5 and the licensed Titan M2 safety chip, together with Android’s hardware-backed safety APIs. Solely cellular apps operating on units which have the mandatory silicon options and Android APIs could be designed to realize this assurance stage. We’re working with C2PA to assist outline future assurance ranges that can push protections even deeper into {hardware}.
Attaining Assurance Stage 2 requires verifiable, difficult-to-forge proof. Google has constructed an end-to-end system on Pixel 10 units that verifies a number of key attributes. Nonetheless, the safety of any declare is basically depending on the integrity of the applying and the OS, an integrity that depends on each being saved present with the most recent safety patches.
- {Hardware} Belief: Android Key Attestation in Pixel 10 is constructed on help for System Identifier Composition Engine (DICE) by Tensor, and Distant Key Provisioning (RKP) to ascertain a belief chain from the second the system begins as much as the OS, stamping out the most typical types of abuse on Android.
- Real System and Software program: Aided by the {hardware} belief described above, Android Key Attestation permits Google C2PA Certification Authorities (CAs) to confirm that they’re speaking with a real bodily system. It additionally permits them to confirm the system has booted securely right into a Play Defend Licensed model of Android, and confirm how lately the working system, bootloader, and system software program and firmware had been patched for safety vulnerabilities.
- Real Software: {Hardware}-backed Android Key Attestation certificates embrace the bundle title and signing certificates related to the app that requested the era of the C2PA signing key, permitting Google C2PA CAs to examine that the app requesting C2PA declare signing certificates is a trusted, registered app.
- Tamper-Resistant Key Storage: On Pixel, C2PA declare signing keys are generated and saved utilizing Android StrongBox within the Titan M2 safety chip. Titan M2 is Frequent Standards PP.0084 AVA_VAN.5 licensed, which means that it’s strongly immune to extracting or tampering with the cryptographic keys saved in it. Android Key Attestation permits Google C2PA CAs to confirm that personal keys had been certainly created inside this hardware-protected vault earlier than issuing certificates for his or her public key counterparts.
The C2PA Conformance Program requires verifiable artifacts backed by a {hardware} Root of Belief, which Android gives via options like Key Attestation. This implies Android builders can leverage these similar instruments to construct apps that meet this commonplace for his or her customers.
Privateness Constructed on a Basis of Belief: Verifiable, Not Personally Identifiable
The sturdy safety stack we described is the inspiration of privateness. However Google takes steps additional to make sure your privateness at the same time as you utilize Content material Credentials, which required fixing two further challenges:
Problem 1: Server-side Processing of Certificates Requests. Google’s C2PA Certification Authorities should certify new cryptographic keys generated on-device. To forestall fraud, these certificates enrollment requests must be authenticated. A extra widespread method would require person accounts for authentication, however this could create a server-side file linking a person’s identification to their C2PA certificates—a privateness trade-off we had been unwilling to make.
Our Resolution: Nameless, {Hardware}-Backed Attestation. We remedy this with Android Key Attestation, which permits Google CAs to confirm what’s getting used (a real app on a safe system) with out ever figuring out who’s utilizing it (the person). Our CAs additionally implement a strict no-logging coverage for data like IP addresses that might tie a certificates again to a person.
Problem 2: The Threat of Traceability By way of Key Reuse. A major privateness threat in any provenance system is traceability. If the identical system or app-specific cryptographic secret’s used to signal a number of images, these photos could be linked by evaluating the important thing. An adversary may doubtlessly join a photograph somebody posts publicly below their actual title with a photograph they put up anonymously, deanonymizing the creator.
Our Resolution: Distinctive Certificates. We get rid of this risk with a maximally personal method. Every key and certificates is used to signal precisely one picture. No two photos ever share the identical public key, a “One-and-Executed” Certificates Administration Technique, making it cryptographically unattainable to hyperlink them. This engineering funding in person privateness is designed to set a transparent commonplace for the trade.
Total, you should utilize Content material Credentials on Pixel 10 with out worry that one other particular person or Google may use it to hyperlink any of your photos to you or each other.
Able to Use When You Are – Even Offline
Implementations of Content material Credentials use trusted time-stamps to make sure the credentials could be validated even after the certificates used to supply them expires. Acquiring these trusted time-stamps usually requires connectivity to a Time-Stamping Authority (TSA) server. However what occurs if the system is offline?
This isn’t a far-fetched state of affairs. Think about you’ve captured a shocking picture of a distant waterfall. The picture has Content material Credentials that show that it was captured by a digicam, however the cryptographic certificates used to supply them will finally expire. And not using a time-stamp, that proof may change into untrusted, and also you’re too removed from a cell sign, which is required to obtain one.
To resolve this, Pixel developed an on-device, offline TSA.
Powered by the safety features of Tensor, Pixel maintains a trusted clock in a safe atmosphere, fully remoted from the user-controlled one in Android. The clock is synchronized often from a trusted supply whereas the system is on-line, and is maintained even after the system goes offline (so long as the cellphone stays powered on). This permits your system to generate its personal cryptographically-signed time-stamps the second you press the shutter—no connection required. It ensures the story behind your picture stays verifiable and trusted after its certificates expires, whether or not you took it in your lounge or on the high of a mountain.
Constructing a Extra Reliable Ecosystem, Collectively
C2PA Content material Credentials will not be the only resolution for figuring out the provenance of digital media. They’re, nonetheless, a tangible step towards extra media transparency and belief as we proceed to unlock extra human creativity with AI.
In our preliminary implementation of Content material Credentials on the Android platform and Pixel 10 lineup, we prioritized a better commonplace of privateness, safety, and value. We invite different implementers of Content material Credentials to guage our method and leverage these similar foundational {hardware} and software program safety primitives. The total potential of those applied sciences can solely be realized via widespread ecosystem adoption.
We sit up for including Content material Credentials throughout extra Google merchandise within the close to future.
