I’ve watched entirely too many AI-generated videos that look like a security camera feed of some sort of wild animal attempting to trick-or-treat before realizing that what I was watching never actually happened. But as AI video increasingly begins to fill social media feeds, Content Authenticity (C2PA) is coming to videos.
This week, Sony announced that it is expanding C2PA protections to video. C2PA is a Content Authenticity initiative across multiple brands that uses standardized metadata tags to indicate how a photo was created. That includes tags indicating whether the image was captured by a camera or generated with generative AI.
But now, for the first time, those protections are coming to video files. Sony says its video-compatible C2PA is an industry first. The authenticity metadata also records 3D depth information, Sony says, which creates “highly accurate verification that videos were captured of actual, existing subjects.”
The feature is coming first to the Sony A1 II and A9 III, which already have access through updated firmware, as well as cinema series cameras, the Sony FX3 and FX30, and the PXW-Z300 camcorder. Support for the A7R V, A7 IV, and A1 is scheduled for after November 2025 or later, while the A7S III is expected to gain support in 2026.
Sony is also giving news organizations and broadcasters the ability to read those C2PA verifications inside Sony’s Ci Media Cloud.
Content Authenticity metadata helps verify if a photo – and now a video – came from an actual camera. I’m glad to see that camera makers are responding quickly to the explosion of AI-generated video.
But, it’s important to note that the metadata C2PA stamps work best when the platforms that share photos and videos are not only able to read the data, but also create a very clear and obvious label as to the source.
Several social media platforms support C2PA, including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, though I would argue that such AI-generated labels aren’t always obvious enough. Facebook’s AI label on Reels, for example, requires going into the post’s menu and selecting AI info; there’s no overlay or label displayed on the video itself. How many people actually take the time to stop scrolling and dig into the menu?
Adding standardized C2PA labels to camera-created videos is a good start, and I hope more brands follow Sony’s lead, but social platforms need to play a role in making such labels not only easy to find but obvious.
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