Publicis Groupe joins human vs. AI content verification initiative C2PA

Global marketing and communications company Publicis Groupe announced it will join the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), an initiative aimed at providing a framework for authenticating human-produced content.

Publicis Groupe, one of the “big four” agency companies, will serve as a Steering Committee member for C2PA. Steering Committee founding members include Adobe, BBC, Intel, Microsoft and other media and tech firms.

Why we care. Generative AI products and features have flooded the market this year following OpenAI’s release of new ChatGPT models. Content creators and the companies that employ them are concerned that generative AI will use assets created by humans without attribution or compensation. This compromises the business model for publishers and agencies while potentially exposing brands and other organizations that use content to liability when using protected intellectual property without knowing it.

Content authenticity. The C2PA was launched in 2020. Its aim is to build and standardize a framework for content verification of human-made assets and authenticating the provenance of assets used by AI.

The organization successfully implemented the C2PA Specification, which verifies original content such as photos, video and audio. These assets maintain a provenance attached to them to which future users can refer. For instance, an image shot by a freelance photographer will be listed as an original source, followed by a publisher like The New York Times, who paid for the image’s use.

This framework, if adopted widely throughout the content supply chain, will expose those assets that don’t have a verifiable provenance.

“The C2PA’s efforts help protect that invaluable IP and ensure authentic creative visions are brought to completion — and verified along the way,” said Carla Serrano, Chief Strategy Officer, Publicis Groupe, in a company statement. “And people can feel confident knowing that the content they’re viewing is unique, original and straight from the source.”

Responsible AI use. Participation in C2PA signals an effort by major content, communications and tech companies to set standards for responsible AI use. Many of the Steering Committee members have created AI tools of their own.

Publicis Groupe created a portfolio of tools, including Marcel, an internal custom-made AI platform used by its 98,000 employees. And earlier this year, Adobe introduced Firefly, a suite of generative AI tools for content creation.

C2PA has also joined forces with other partner organizations, including the Microsoft and BBC-led Project Origin Alliance and the Adobe-led Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI).

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