C2PA was founded in 2021 by Adobe, Arm, the BBC, Intel, Microsoft and Truepic to address misinformation and content authenticity at scale. The standard uses cryptographic manifests embedded directly in media files (images, video, audio and documents), creating a tamper-evident record of how content was created and modified.
For AI-generated content, C2PA manifests typically record the generating tool and that the content is AI-generated (the digital source type). Prompts and generation parameters usually live in the tool’s own metadata, not the manifest. This makes C2PA the emerging technical foundation for AI transparency regulations. Major platforms including Google, Meta, and OpenAI have committed to supporting C2PA verification.