At Made by Google 2025, we introduced that the brand new Google Pixel 10 telephones will assist C2PA Content material Credentials in Pixel Digicam and Google Pictures. This announcement represents a sequence of steps in the direction of better digital media transparency:
- The Pixel 10 lineup is the primary to have Content material Credentials inbuilt throughout each picture created by Pixel Digicam.
- The Pixel Digicam app achieved Assurance Stage 2, the very best safety score presently outlined by the C2PA Conformance Program. Assurance Stage 2 for a cell app is presently solely potential on the Android platform.
- A personal-by-design strategy to C2PA certificates administration, the place no picture or group of photographs may be associated to 1 one other or the one who created them.
- Pixel 10 telephones assist on-device trusted time-stamps, which ensures photographs captured together with your native digicam app may be trusted after the certificates expires, even when they had been captured when your machine 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 degree of belief to digital media, and the way builders can apply this mannequin to their very own apps on Android.
A New Strategy to Content material Credentials
Generative AI may help us all to be extra inventive, productive, and revolutionary. 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 power 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 similar to photographs, movies, or audio information had been made, protected by the identical digital signature expertise that has secured on-line transactions and cell 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 similar to 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 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 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 special 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 Digicam 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 photographs that have already got Content material Credentials and are edited utilizing AI or non-AI instruments, and likewise to any photographs which are edited utilizing AI instruments. It is going to validate and show Content material Credentials below a brand new part within the About panel, if the JPEG picture being seen comprises this knowledge. Study extra about it in Google Pictures Assist.
Given the broad vary of eventualities through which Content material Credentials are connected by these apps, we designed our C2PA implementation structure from the onset to be:
- Safe from silicon to purposes
- 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), similar to Google, are incentivized to solely concern certificates to real situations of apps from trusted builders with a view 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 Digicam software on the Pixel 10 lineup has achieved Assurance Stage 2, the very best safety score presently outlined by the C2PA Conformance Program. This was made potential by a powerful 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 cell apps working on gadgets which have the required silicon options and Android APIs may be designed to realize this assurance degree. We’re working with C2PA to assist outline future assurance ranges that can push protections even deeper into {hardware}.
Reaching Assurance Stage 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 saved 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 machine 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 machine. It additionally permits them to confirm the machine has booted securely right into a Play Defend Licensed model of Android, and confirm how not too long ago the working system, bootloader, and system software program and firmware had been patched for safety vulnerabilities.
- Real Utility: {Hardware}-backed Android Key Attestation certificates embody the bundle identify and signing certificates related to the app that requested the era of the C2PA signing key, permitting Google C2PA CAs to test 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, that means that it’s strongly proof against 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 supplies by way of options like Key Attestation. This implies Android builders can leverage these identical 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 sturdy safety stack we described is the muse of privateness. However Google takes steps additional to make sure your privateness whilst 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 stop fraud, these certificates enrollment requests should be authenticated. A extra frequent strategy would require consumer accounts for authentication, however this could create a server-side document linking a consumer’s id to their C2PA certificates—a privateness trade-off we had been unwilling to make.
Our Answer: Nameless, {Hardware}-Backed Attestation. We clear up this with Android Key Attestation, which permits Google CAs to confirm what’s getting used (a real app on a safe machine) with out ever understanding who’s utilizing it (the consumer). Our CAs additionally implement a strict no-logging coverage for info like IP addresses that would tie a certificates again to a consumer.
Problem 2: The Threat of Traceability By means of Key Reuse. A big privateness danger in any provenance system is traceability. If the identical machine or app-specific cryptographic secret is used to signal a number of photographs, these photographs may be linked by evaluating the important thing. An adversary might doubtlessly join a photograph somebody posts publicly below their actual identify with a photograph they submit anonymously, deanonymizing the creator.
Our Answer: Distinctive Certificates. We get rid of this risk with a maximally non-public strategy. Every key and certificates is used to signal precisely one picture. No two photographs ever share the identical public key, a “One-and-Finished” Certificates Administration Technique, making it cryptographically not possible to hyperlink them. This engineering funding in consumer privateness is designed to set a transparent customary for the trade.
Total, you should use Content material Credentials on Pixel 10 with out worry that one other individual or Google might use it to hyperlink any of your photographs 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 may 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 machine is offline?
This isn’t a far-fetched situation. Think about you’ve captured a surprising 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. And not using a time-stamp, that proof might turn 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 atmosphere, fully remoted from the user-controlled one in Android. The clock is synchronized recurrently from a trusted supply whereas the machine is on-line, and is maintained even after the machine goes offline (so long as the cellphone stays powered on). This enables your machine 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 prime of a mountain.
Constructing a Extra Reliable Ecosystem, Collectively
C2PA Content material Credentials should not the only 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 judge our strategy and leverage these identical foundational {hardware} and software program safety primitives. The total potential of those applied sciences can solely be realized by way of widespread ecosystem adoption.
We stay up for including Content material Credentials throughout extra Google merchandise within the close to future.
