Every one of this week’s stories is about a receipt. Apple wants to hand photographers one at the moment of capture. The broadcast engineers arriving at IBC this morning want one attached to every frame that moves between facilities. Jeffrey Katzenberg wants a video model that comes with one built in. Warner and BMG want to be the ones paid for issuing it. For two years the industry’s answer to synthetic media has been enforcement after the fact, a lawsuit or a takedown or a fact-check once the damage was visible. What is shifting now is where the proof gets made. It is moving upstream, into the sensor, the pipeline, and the training set, before anything ships.
What connects these four is the layer. All of them install proof beneath the content rather than policing it above. What does not connect them is who gets to sign. Apple and the C2PA coalition have picked the same problem and opposite answers about whether the verifier is an open standard or a single company. Katzenberg and the …
