At Made by Google 2025, we introduced that the brand new Google Pixel 10 telephones will assist C2PA Content material Credentials in Pixel Digital camera and Google Pictures. 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 in-built throughout each picture created by Pixel Digital camera.
- The Pixel Digital camera app achieved Assurance Degree 2, the very best safety score at the moment outlined by the C2PA Conformance Program. Assurance Degree 2 for a cellular app is at the moment solely doable on the Android platform.
- A personal-by-design strategy to C2PA certificates administration, the place no picture or group of pictures could be associated to at least one one other or the one who created them.
- Pixel 10 telephones assist on-device trusted time-stamps, which ensures pictures captured together with your native digicam app could be trusted after the certificates expires, even when they have been captured when your gadget was offline.
These capabilities are powered by Google Tensor G5, Titan M2 safety chip, the superior hardware-backed security measures of the Android platform, and Pixel engineering experience.
On this submit, 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 may also help us all to be extra artistic, productive, and progressive. However it may be laborious to inform the distinction between content material that’s been AI-generated, and content material created with out AI. The flexibility to confirm the supply and historical past—or provenance—of digital content material is extra essential than ever.
Content material Credentials convey a wealthy set of details about how media resembling pictures, movies, or audio information have been made, protected by the identical digital signature know-how that has secured on-line transactions and cellular apps for many years. It empowers customers to determine AI-generated (or altered) content material, serving to to foster transparency and belief in generative AI. It may be complemented by watermarking applied sciences resembling SynthID.
Content material Credentials are an trade customary backed by a broad coalition of main firms for securely conveying the origin and historical past of media information. The usual is developed by the Coalition for Content material Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), of which Google is a steering committee member.
The normal strategy to classifying digital picture content material has targeted on categorizing content material as “AI” vs. “not AI”. This has been the premise for a lot of legislative efforts, which have required the labeling of artificial media. This conventional strategy 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”. For this reason Google is taking a unique strategy 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 Pictures attaches Content material Credentials to JPEG pictures that have already got Content material Credentials and are edited utilizing AI or non-AI instruments, and likewise to any pictures which can be edited utilizing AI instruments. It should validate and show Content material Credentials beneath a brand new part within the About panel, if the JPEG picture being seen incorporates this knowledge. Study extra about it in Google Pictures Assist.
Given the broad vary of situations through 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), resembling Google, are incentivized to solely situation certificates to real situations of apps from trusted builders with the intention to stop unhealthy actors from undermining the system. Equally, app builders wish to shield their C2PA declare signing keys from unauthorized use. And naturally, customers need assurance that the media information they depend on come from the place they declare. For these causes, the C2PA outlined the Conformance Program.
The Pixel Digital camera utility on the Pixel 10 lineup has achieved Assurance Degree 2, the very best safety score at the moment 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 gadgets which have the required 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 may push protections even deeper into {hardware}.
Reaching Assurance Degree 2 requires verifiable, difficult-to-forge proof. Google has constructed an end-to-end system on Pixel 10 gadgets 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 stored present with the newest safety patches.
- {Hardware} Belief: Android Key Attestation in Pixel 10 is constructed on assist for System Identifier Composition Engine (DICE) by Tensor, and Distant Key Provisioning (RKP) to determine a belief chain from the second the gadget begins as much as the OS, stamping out the commonest 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 gadget. It additionally permits them to confirm the gadget has booted securely right into a Play Defend Licensed model of Android, and confirm how just lately the working system, bootloader, and system software program and firmware have been patched for safety vulnerabilities.
- Real Software: {Hardware}-backed Android Key Attestation certificates embody the package deal title and signing certificates related to the app that requested the era of the C2PA signing key, permitting Google C2PA CAs to verify 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 non-public keys have 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 offers by options like Key Attestation. This implies Android builders can leverage these similar instruments to construct apps that meet this customary for his or her customers.
Privateness Constructed on a Basis of Belief: Verifiable, Not Personally Identifiable
The strong safety stack we described is the muse of privateness. However Google takes steps additional to make sure your privateness whilst you employ Content material Credentials, which required fixing two extra challenges:
Problem 1: Server-side Processing of Certificates Requests. Google’s C2PA Certification Authorities should certify new cryptographic keys generated on-device. To stop fraud, these certificates enrollment requests must be authenticated. A extra frequent strategy would require person accounts for authentication, however this might create a server-side file linking a person’s identification to their C2PA certificates—a privateness trade-off we have 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 gadget) with out ever realizing 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 means of Key Reuse. A major privateness danger in any provenance system is traceability. If the identical gadget or app-specific cryptographic key’s used to signal a number of pictures, these pictures could be linked by evaluating the important thing. An adversary might doubtlessly join a photograph somebody posts publicly beneath their actual title with a photograph they submit anonymously, deanonymizing the creator.
Our Resolution: Distinctive Certificates. We remove this menace with a maximally personal strategy. Every key and certificates is used to signal precisely one picture. No two pictures ever share the identical public key, a “One-and-Executed” Certificates Administration Technique, making it cryptographically not possible to hyperlink them. This engineering funding in person privateness is designed to set a transparent customary for the trade.
General, you need to use Content material Credentials on Pixel 10 with out concern that one other particular person or Google might use it to hyperlink any of your pictures 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 provide them expires. Acquiring these trusted time-stamps sometimes requires connectivity to a Time-Stamping Authority (TSA) server. However what occurs if the gadget is offline?
This isn’t a far-fetched situation. 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 provide them will finally expire. With out a time-stamp, that proof might develop 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 security measures of Tensor, Pixel maintains a trusted clock in a safe surroundings, fully remoted from the user-controlled one in Android. The clock is synchronized repeatedly from a trusted supply whereas the gadget is on-line, and is maintained even after the gadget goes offline (so long as the telephone stays powered on). This enables your gadget 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 front room or on the prime of a mountain.
Constructing a Extra Reliable Ecosystem, Collectively
C2PA Content material Credentials will not be the only real answer 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 customary of privateness, safety, and usefulness. We invite different implementers of Content material Credentials to guage our strategy and leverage these similar foundational {hardware} and software program safety primitives. The complete potential of those applied sciences can solely be realized by widespread ecosystem adoption.
We sit up for including Content material Credentials throughout extra Google merchandise within the close to future.
