YouTube takes a baby step toward labeling authentic video - The Verge

By Umar Shakir, a news writer fond of the electric vehicle lifestyle and things that plug in via USB-C. He spent over 15 years in IT support before joining The Verge.

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YouTube is rolling out new labels that tell if uploaded videos come from a real camera with unaltered footage and sound. The new “captured with a camera” label can be seen in action courtesy of digital content authentication service Trupic, which uploaded a video to its channel, triggering the disclosure in the video description panel. Trupic says it has the “first authentic video with C2PA Content Credentials on YouTube.”

Companies like Leica started implementing content credentials in hardware last year; however, it isn’t yet clear whether those credentials will trigger YouTube’s labels.

YouTube is leaning on the C2PA standard to detect the authenticity of uploaded videos, meaning the feature will work only with recording devices and tools that support the metadata. The site’s help page for the new feature says the label “signifies that the creator used specific technology to verify their video’s origin and confirm its audio and visuals haven’t been altered.” Additionally, creators must specifically use tools with C2PA version 2.1 or higher for the label to appear — so you probably won’t see this label regularly for a long time.

Last month, Laurie Richardson, vice president of trust and safety at Google, said it is “exploring ways to relay C2PA information to viewers on YouTube when content is captured with a camera” in a blog post about increasing transparency for generative AI content. In response to an inquiry by The Verge, Google spokesperson Elena Hernandez pointed back to that blog post.

Videos don’t necessarily need to be unedited to get the label, but according to the support page, every step of the process must support C2PA and avoid:

- Edits that break the chain of provenance, or make it impossible to trace the video back to its original source. For example, if you capture an image with C2PA metadata and then save it to your phone’s photo album that doesn’t support C2PA v2.1 or higher, that may break the chain of provenance.

- Significant alterations to the video’s core nature or content, including its sounds or visuals.

- Edits that make the video incompatible with C2PA standards (version 2.1 and above).

Google launched an “altered or synthetic content” label earlier this year that requires YouTube users to self-identify their uploads (scout’s honor!) that contain AI-generated content.

Update, October 16th: Clarified the response from Google.

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