What Are Content Credentials (C2PA)? A Plain-English Guide

If you've saved an image from an AI tool lately and noticed a small “CR” icon or an “AI info” note, you've met Content Credentials. They're built on an open standard called C2PA — the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity — and they're quietly becoming part of almost every file that passes through a modern AI or editing tool.

What C2PA actually is

C2PA is a way to attach a cryptographically signed record to a file describing where it came from and how it was changed. Think of it as a tamper-evident nutrition label: a small block of data embedded inside the image, video or PDF that a viewer can read to learn the file's history. It's backed by Adobe, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and camera makers, which is why it's showing up in so many places at once.

What's inside a manifest

A C2PA manifest typically records:

• The tool or model that created or edited the file (for example, an AI generator or Photoshop's Generative Fill).
• A timestamp and a chain of edit actions.
• A digital signature from the issuer, so tampering can be detected.

Who attaches them

You'll find Content Credentials on images from ChatGPT and DALL·E, on edits made with Adobe Firefly and Generative Fill, and increasingly from cameras and phone editors. Some tools (like Midjourney today) don't embed a C2PA manifest, though they may still add ordinary EXIF data — see our full FAQ for the specifics.

How platforms use them

Social platforms read this embedded provenance to decide whether to show an AI label. We break that down in Why Instagram shows an “AI info” label. It's worth knowing that platforms combine C2PA with their own signals, so the label isn't driven by metadata alone.

How to view or remove them

You don't need special software to see what's inside your own file. Drop it into the C2PACleaner tool and it lists the Content Credentials, EXIF and GPS it finds — all read locally in your browser, nothing uploaded. If you'd rather not carry that provenance data around, the same tool removes it losslessly. For a step-by-step walkthrough, see How to remove C2PA & AI metadata.