Beyond Deepfakes: Why Digital Provenance is Critical Now

Only a few years ago, the tell-tale sign of an AI video was a poorly rendered clip of Will Smith eating spaghetti. Today, the quality of AI-generated content has advanced dramatically, making it almost indistinguishable from reality. This rapid evolution is coupled with the alarming rise of data manipulation and misinformation, thanks to generative AI.  

In this complex landscape, the concept of digital provenance has become more relevant than ever. It's so critical that Gartner has listed it among the 10 technology trends poised to shape the next five years. In this article, we’ll explain what digital provenance is, its core components, and why it's essential for ensuring content authenticity and combating misinformation in our AI-driven world.

What is digital provenance?

Put simply, digital provenance is the detailed history of any digital asset, recording its entire lifecycle from creation to destruction, including:

• Creation details
• Ownership history
• All subsequent changes

By enabling this traceability, digital provenance serves as the digital footprint of digital datasets, ensuring that modifications to information found online can be discovered

The components of digital provenance

There are three main components of digital provenance:

Creation history

Digital provenance, first and foremost, tracks the creation of a digital entity. It provides details on when and where it was created, along with other important foundational and contextual information. For instance, digital signatures and cryptography help verify the authenticity and ownership of digital assets. 

Modification history

Digital assets are bound to change at one or more points in their existence. Digital provenance helps track these changes, including changes to timestamps and overall content. This helps in preserving the integrity of any piece of data online. Cryptographic hashing is excellent for tracking changes to digital assets because hashes are irreversible. Even the smallest modification instantly produces a different hash value, making any change easy to detect. 

Permissions and ownership

As digital content changes hands, its ownership can change in the process. This transfer of ownership can be tracked with digital provenance. It also helps to keep track of permissions to determine who is authorized to perform specific actions on a file and who isn’t.

The problem of modern-day misinformation

Misinformation is a tale as old as time itself. For centuries, humanity has had to deal with some form of misinformation or another.

For instance, in the 19th century, the Cardiff Giant hoax captivated America. A cigar maker orchestrated the discovery of a 10-foot stone figure, claiming it was a petrified giant. It drew immense crowds and profits until experts — much like digital provenance tools today — examined its origins and materials to expose it as a fraud.

In the modern world, misinformation is even more rife, especially with the rise of generative artificial intelligence tools that make it easy to create fake, lifelike images and videos. Without digital provenance, it will become increasingly challenging to tell authentic from counterfeit.

Learn about the related concept of disinformation security >

Modern digital provenance efforts

Several organizations have made significant efforts towards improving digital provenance. Key initiatives like the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) and the BBC's Project Origin, were instrumental in the formation of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA).

C2PA is now the unified, open technical standard for publishers, creators, and consumers to establish the origin and edits of digital content. This standard, known as Content Credentials, ensures content complies with established guidelines as the digital ecosystem evolves.

Benefits of digital provenance

Digital provenance offers many advantages in security, privacy, and data authenticity.

• Improved transparency. Digital assets that can be traced through their ownership and modification history, down to their origin, are much less likely to be falsified. Digital provenance enables this, thereby contributing significantly to digital transparency.
• Fake news detection. With digital provenance, fake news and misinformation are easily curbed. You can double-check any information in the public domain for record inconsistencies and manipulations.
• Fraud reduction. Digital provenance helps reduce fraud by documenting data changes, making it easier to detect alterations and catch falsities.
• More credibility. There is greater trust in organizations that take the time to present credible data, and the public is more receptive to their content.
• Better user experience. Better digital provenance means users can be confident that the content they’re interacting with online is authentic and verifiable.

Drawbacks of digital provenance

There are a few chinks in the armor of digital provenance. These are:

User adoption: Digital provenance systems come with a learning curve that some users may struggle with. This creates a barrier to mass adoption, especially among less digitally savvy users.

Hacks: Digital provenance systems are not foolproof. There will be occasional breaches in a digital provenance system, but the likelihood of such breaches will decrease as cybersecurity improvements continue.

Data privacy: Not all information about a digital asset should be publicly accessible. For example, some sensitive personally identifiable information may need to be included in a digital asset, even if it is personal. Data provenance implementers face a unique challenge in such circumstances, balancing privacy and transparency.

Scaling: The absolute amount of data in the world is ever-increasing. As data grows, so does the capacity of data provenance systems to grow alongside it to ensure security and authenticity are maintained.

Implementation: Digital provenance systems require a high level of expertise to implement. They also require significant resources and infrastructure and must integrate seamlessly with existing systems.

How organizations can implement digital provenance

Digital provenance can be implemented through provenance tools and frameworks, algorithms, and APIs.

Leveraging provenance tools and frameworks

Organizations can utilize existing tools and frameworks.

For example, Google, as a steering committee member of the C2PA, has developed SynthID, which uses invisible watermarks to mark and identify AI-generated content. Google also integrates C2PA content credentials into products like Search and Ads.

Organizations can also rely on digital provenance tools and frameworks such as the CamFlow Project, Kepler, the Open Provenance Model, and Linux Provenance Modules.

Developing custom algorithms

Hiring data engineers to develop advanced algorithms can automatically capture and document data flows. These algorithms can detect unusual data behavior and potential security or data-integrity issues.

Utilizing APIs for integration

APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) improve digital provenance by automatically collecting, updating, and sharing records across various platforms, ensuring accuracy and completeness. Capture SDK, for instance, is an enterprise-ready solution that integrates C2PA and blockchain through a comprehensive API suite.

Final thoughts

Digital provenance is at the cornerstone of data security and integrity. A world without data provenance systems is one where data loses its value and misinformation runs amok.

Thankfully, thanks to the efforts of big organizations like Microsoft and Adobe, we don’t have to live in such a world. The C2PA is also contributing significantly to data provenance efforts. One way they’re doing that is by integrating metadata into digital assets.

Advancements in encryption techniques have also played an essential role in enhancing digital provenance. Innovations such as zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), which help mitigate privacy concerns in digital provenance, have also played a role in advancing the cause. As more innovations are developed, we rapidly move towards a world of higher data integrity and more digital transparency.