Guide

What are Content Credentials?

Content Credentials are tamper-evident provenance records for digital media. They can describe where a piece of content came from, how it was created or edited, and which tools or processes were involved. The data is cryptographically bound to the asset so a compatible verifier can check whether the provenance record is still associated with that content and whether it has been altered.

The underlying technical standard is developed by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, or C2PA. In C2PA terminology, a Content Credential is commonly represented as a C2PA manifest attached to, or otherwise associated with, an asset such as an image, video, audio file, or document.

What information can Content Credentials contain?

A credential can contain assertions about an asset's history. Depending on the creator, device, software, and workflow, that may include when the content was created, the application or device involved, editing actions, the use of AI in a creation or editing step, and information about the organization or system that signed the credential.

The exact information varies. Content Credentials are designed to support selective disclosure, so a credential is not guaranteed to contain every possible detail about the file or its author.

Are Content Credentials the same as an AI detector?

No. Content Credentials report declared provenance; they do not guess from pixels whether an image was generated by AI. When a compatible creation or editing tool records AI use, that information can become part of the provenance history. But an AI-generated or AI-edited image can still exist without readable Content Credentials.

For the same reason, no Content Credentials found does not mean human-created. Credentials may never have been added, may not be supported by the current tool, or may have been removed or become unavailable during export, transformation, or sharing.

What does cryptographic verification prove?

Verification can provide evidence that a credential is correctly formed, associated with the asset, and has not been tampered with since it was signed. It can also help a verifier evaluate the signer against applicable trust information.

That is different from proving that every statement inside the credential is objectively true. C2PA explicitly treats provenance as evidence about content history rather than a universal truth score. Content Credentials are therefore useful alongside media literacy, source checking, fact-checking, and digital forensics rather than as a replacement for them.

How are Content Credentials different from EXIF?

EXIF metadata can store useful context such as camera make and model, capture time, dimensions, software, and GPS coordinates. But ordinary EXIF fields can be removed or rewritten without the cryptographic provenance model used by C2PA.

A practical inspection workflow therefore treats the two separately: Content Credentials for signed provenance evidence, and EXIF for contextual metadata. Image Provenance Checker displays them in separate panels for exactly that reason.

How can I check an image?

Open the Image Provenance Checker and select an image. The current tool reads supported C2PA and EXIF metadata locally in your browser. The image itself is not uploaded by the MVP. If readable Content Credentials are present, the tool shows available manifest details and validation evidence. If they are not present, the result is deliberately phrased as an absence of readable credentials rather than proof about how the image was created.

For more detail on the underlying standard, read What is C2PA? or visit the official C2PA FAQ and Content Credentials overview.