When it comes to giving attribution to other people’s creations, social media practices do not stand out precisely for respect and for granting credit. On the contrary, on social media and even in the media every day we see the unscrupulous use of content generated by others who are neither asked for permission to use their work nor are they quoted. It’s something we recently reviewed with the case of sinAzucar.org.

In this sense, Adobe, Twitter and the New York Times have announced that they are working on a system to add attribution to images, so that it collects who has created a particular content, and if it has been modified by other users. With this mechanism, Twitter could offer, for example, a tag of who a content belongs to, although no in-depth technical details have not yet been revealed.

Content Authenticity Initiative, a mysterious solution that also claims to fight with fake news

The name of the technology they are developing is the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), and Adobe is mainly focused on it from the point of view of authenticity. Marc Lavallee of the New York Times stated in his presentation that “discerning trustworthy news on the Internet is one of the biggest challenges facing news consumers today.” That is, with the development of CAI, the New York Times seeks an approach to curb misinformation that marries quite well with social media events.

When there are riots or attacks, it is very common to see on Twitter surprising and shocking photos that in many cases have little to do with the moment to which they are said to belong, and in many cases not even to the country or place mentioned. That leads to conspiracy theories appearing that no matter however much they demise, they heat up. If the photos can establish an identifier that proves more details and cannot be disassociated from the work, this reality could improve. What they’ve shown on a credit tag in an edited image with Lightroom and Photoshop.

Good News for content creators: @scottbelsky announcing Content Authenticity Initiative in collaboration with @nytimes & @Twitter at @adobemax pic.twitter.com/s5UgwQf0GQ

— Yiying Lu ? ? 陆怡颖 (@YiyingLu) November 4, 2019

The problem is that, as we said, it is unknown how this can work in practice. Above all, if the system does not integrate with manufacturers of cameras and more applications beyond those of Adobe (although Adobe wants it to expand). It will also be necessary to see how it affects the editing of the images, because, as they point out in The Verge, this could be uncomfortable and lack of flexibility like that which characterizes other DRM (Digital Rights Management) systems. In addition, it will be necessary to see how difficult it is to eliminate that label, and with which displays it is compatible.