- Samsung adopted the Content Credentials standard for AI-edited images
- The Samsung Galaxy S25 range will be the first phones in the world to use the standard
- Standard adds tag and metadata to AI-edited images created on a Galaxy S25 device
Most of Samsung Galaxy Unpacked’s attention was obviously devoted to the new phones – those in the Samsung Galaxy S25 range – but there was something quite important that flew under the radar, and that was the adoption of content credentials.
In 2024, adopting a standard to mark the creation of images and digital content was a hot topic, particularly due to the rise of generative AI and the scourge of art theft that followed to train large language models. Tech companies have begun to adopt their own metadata markers and watermarks to indicate changes made by AI, but a standard for identifying the legitimacy of an image has often been ignored.
One of the pioneers of such a standard is Content Credentials, supported by the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI). The tool is developed by Adobe and the Initiative counts among its members Microsoft, Getty Images and Nvidia, to name a few.
With this announcement, Samsung has joined the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), which unifies the work of CAI and its Content Credentials standard with Project Origin, another organization fighting disinformation but anchored in an information ecosystem capable of verify the authenticity of the content.
“We are excited to announce that Samsung will implement #ContentCredentials for AI-generated images on the #GalaxyS25! » » wrote the C2PA on LinkedIn. “Samsung is committed to taking an important step to bring transparency to the digital ecosystem.”
If you think an image has been altered with AI, you can drop it into a tool created by Adobe to verify its authenticity.
Think of content credentials as a ledger of content information; what device it was captured on, what program (or AI tool) it was edited with, and even what settings were enabled when the original image was created.
With this standard in tow, AI-generated and edited images produced on Samsung Galaxy S handsets will receive a metadata-based label, essentially indicating that the AI has tampered with what you’re seeing. The “CR” watermark will also be added to the image. Although the S25 family is the first-ever set of phones to carry metadata tagging on images, it follows camera makers Nikon and Leica who have also signed on to the standard.
The standard is, generally speaking, a win for creatives looking to protect their work, but the obvious problem with any standard is a lack of enthusiasm. If not enough companies producing AI tools adopt standards that make it easy to report AI-modified content, such a system serves no purpose.
With over 4,000 members under the umbrella of the Content Authenticity Initiative, we hope that tools for effectively reporting AI use will keep pace with the growing capabilities of these tools.
