Trust Redefined in the AI Era as Content Authentication Becomes Essential
With generative AI making it easier to produce content at scale, the risks of fake content, including press releases, financial communications, and deepfake audio and video, are rising.
In today’s digital landscape, communicators must make content security part of their cybersecurity priorities—especially during Cybersecurity Awareness Month.
Underscoring these new challenges, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned earlier this year of a global fraud crisis. Forrester and other technology experts have highlighted the growing risks of AI-generated content and urged companies to take proactive steps to protect themselves.
Content provenance authentication, a set of technology standards developed by leading technology and media companies, introduces a new layer of security for content.
The combination of verification (of an organization or individual), integration of digital watermarks and credentials into content, and the use of blockchain to log content manifests provides a way for audiences to identify the true source of content and determine whether it has been manipulated.
Authentication builds an anchor of trust into digital content—whether it’s a document, image, audio, or video file—to prove its authenticity wherever it travels.
As we transition from a “trust but verify” to a “verify, then trust” digital world, this matters. When credentials are integrated into press releases, financial disclosures, or research reports, journalists, analysts, and clients can confirm the content’s source, making them more likely to engage.
Reducing the risk that audiences act on fake content serves the interests of companies, markets, and the public. Authentication lowers the chance that articles will be based on false information, that disinformation will spread, or that inaccurate financial data will be trusted. It can even help prevent payments being sent to fraudsters.
Authentication alone does not eliminate fake content. Tools that detect fraud, misinformation, and disinformation are also essential in multi-layered cyber defense strategies.
Just as websites adopted security certificates in the shift from “http” to “https,” embedding authentication credentials into content is now a key strategy for strengthening content security.
There are added benefits, including greater searchability, as authenticated content is expected to be prioritized by aggregators, search engines, and AI models. Proof of authorship, integration of geolocation data, and AI training opt-in or opt-out instructions are also part of the authentication value proposition.
Growing awareness of the financial and reputational risks of misinformation is driving interest in content provenance authentication. In discussions with clients about integrating authentication into workflows—and through collaboration with the Content Authenticity Initiative and the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA)—it feels as though the industry is reaching a tipping point for widespread adoption.
A senior media executive once told me something that’s worth repeating: “In three years we’ll be wondering how it was possible that content credentials were not included in digital documents.”
For communicators, the message is clear: in an age of AI and disinformation, authenticity is the new trust signal.
