AI is becoming increasingly prevalent in everyday life, business, government, and more. However, as market demand increases and technology progresses, the innovation conversation too often precedes the ethics conversation. When ethical principles are not embedded into AI applications – from training models to data usage – authentic human creatives absorb the impact.
“All of these [AI] advancements have happened so quickly that it feels like the technology is far, far ahead of our comfort zone as people. I don’t think people feel as though there are enough measures and clarity… That’s the driving force behind our involvement with and dedication to the Content Authenticity Initiative.”
Michael Wells, VP of Strategic Projects, PhotoShelter
What is the Content Authenticity Initiative?
The Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) is a global coalition of over 1,800 leading tech and media companies, news publishers, camera manufacturers, nonprofits and others, working together to add a verifiable layer of transparency and trust to content online via Content Credentials.
Our membership in the CAI aligns with like-minded media and tech companies committed to ensuring brands and creators maintain proper attribution and credit.
Why Isn’t Our Creative Work Online Safe?
Metadata, data that provides information about rights and administration of an image, is a text field that can easily be edited – which can put the authenticity of photographers’ images and creatives’ work at risk of being falsified.
CAI certification, on the other hand, acts as a digital stamp that stays with your files over time, unaltered, as images are edited and distributed. These standards were created to ensure provenance authenticity, making it clear whether any significant changes have been made to an image.
“You can’t easily falsify a CAI record, whereas you can easily change any old metadata field,” Michael explains. “It’s a new kind of field, and it’s a special kind of data, which is protected in ways that other metadata wouldn’t be.”
Getting Involved: Why Is It Important?
The CAI thinks of Content Credentials as a “digital nutrition label” that shows important information or “ingredients,” such as the creator’s name, the date it was created, what tools were used and any edits that were made. Content Credentials can be easily adopted by any company or developer via its open-source toolkit.
“The Content Authenticity Initiative is doing incredibly important work that will allow its members to build and maintain widespread trust with content creators. At PhotoShelter, we’ve made it our mission since day one to protect brands and creatives alike, so joining forces with such a pivotal organization to further develop content attribution standards and tools made perfect sense. We look forward to continuing to solidify and extend our commitment to this community.”
Andrew Fingerman, CEO, PhotoShelter
Balancing Innovation and Ethical Responsibility
“We don’t want [people’s concerns about AI] to take away any confidence in the sort of work we do at PhotoShelter,” Michael explains. “We want people to enjoy the benefits of AI and get the reassurance that they’re being supplied by a company that is thoughtful and meaningful about the way it uses AI.”
That’s why, in addition to our commitment to the CAI, we’ve launched our very own AI Ethics Board. The Ethics Board will serve as our trusted advisor in advancing responsible AI based on a rigorous set of standards rooted in transparency and accountability. Read more about our board here.
Protecting artists and creatives is a top priority for PhotoShelter. All of our core company values ladder up to this initiative, and the trust, safety and security of our customers and their work.
If you want to learn more about PhotoShelter’s commitment to artificial intelligence and our thoughtful approach to building a better DAM, watch our on-demand webinar with Michael Wells, VP of Special Projects:
Read our press release to learn more about how we’re involved with the Content Authenticity Initiative.
