Content provenance

Knowing whether a piece of content was made or changed by AI.

Facts

Lane: Trust and governance
Wave: 7 of 12 (build order, not a date)
Needs: 0 boxes all the way back through hard links
Unlocks: 6 boxes downstream through hard links
Leverage: 0.3 points · stands in the way of 4 of 53 stages · rank 28 of 57
Cluster: Around licensed generative media

Evidence as of October 2026

Google’s Pixel 10 signs every photo with C2PA credentials by default, and several camera makers support them. But social platforms often strip the credentials, and fewer than 1% of news images carry them.

01C2PA adoption in 2026: hardware, platforms and verification reality

Around it

Needs · 0

Nothing beyond the detail list. It can start at any time.

Unlocks · 2

Healthy information ecosystemcapability · Speculative
Disclosure and labellingcapability · Emerging

Loops and off-ramps

Synthetic content and the commonsharmful loop
Slop and labellingbalancing loop

Openings researchers' judgement, October 2026 scouting

Startup room 39/100 · rank 62 of 124 Research room 54/100 · rank 48 of 124

Crowding3 Lab overlap4.5 Small-team fit3 Buyer today3 Research openness4

Depth: deep
Players: C2PA/CAI (6,000+ members); Adobe; Google; Reality Defender ($33m A); GetReal ($17.5m A); Resemble AI ($13m); Steg.AI
Wedge: Research on robust watermarks, detection that generalises to new generators and text provenance; commercially, enterprise deepfake-fraud detection or C2PA manifests for agent outputs. research