Cloudflare Joins CAI and Enables Content Credentials for 20% of the Internet

Cloudflare, the leading connectivity cloud company behind which 20% of the Internet’s traffic sits, launched a one-click Content Credentials system to track image authenticity across the internet and preserve accurate creator attribution.

This is a massive deal and a huge win for the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), which Cloudflare has also joined. Content Credentials, based on the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), allow publishers, creators, and regular web users to trace the origin of the media they view. It also ensures that creators can be accurately and consistently credited for their work.

“The future of the Internet depends on trust and authenticity,” says Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO, Cloudflare. “By integrating Content Credentials across our global network, we can help media and news organizations to verify authenticity and maintain ownership of their work, wherever it moves online. This isn’t just about securing individual images — it’s about giving publishers the tools they need to preserve trust and remain relevant in the age of AI.”

Cloudflare notes that, while it’s incredibly powerful to instantly share photos with anyone across the internet, it can become difficult to verify the authenticity of an image or who created it. This is becoming a much more important consideration in the age of generative AI, as it is easier than ever for people to create convincing fake photos, which can go far beyond memes and jokes but have real-world consequences and, over time, significantly and irreparably damage people’s trust in photos.

In an accompanying blog post, Cloudflare notes that digital content provenance is hugely important. By integrating Content Credentials into its platform, Cloudflare hopes to reduce instances when a photographer has their image stolen and spread across the web, with name and attribution data stripped.

“Cloudflare’s implementation of Content Credentials is a major win for Content Credentials, particularly at the final stages of the content creation and management lifecycle,” explains Andy Parsons, Senior Director Content Authenticity at Adobe.

“Ensuring these credentials are always available at the edge provides valuable ‘trust signals,’ ensuring those who interact with content online have confidence in what they engage with, especially with the rise of generative AI and deepfakes. Cloudflare helps strengthen the integrity of digital content, supporting content authenticity for news organizations and journalists, while also enabling creators to maintain proper attribution,” Parsons continues.

Many media organizations are already part of the Content Authenticity Initiative, including the BBC, New York Times, and more. However, even if these and other publications rely on C2PA-equipped cameras and editing applications if their content delivery network (CDN) stripped away the C2PA metadata, the rest is moot — the data is gone when the end user sees it.

“If you. Use Cloudflare, that is now a solved problem,” the company explains. All the user must do on Cloudflare Images is to enable the new Preserve Content Credentials setting.

“The journey from when a Content Credential is applied to a file to when it reaches the viewer can be complex,” says Jen Tse of the Content Authenticity Initiative. “For example, a photographer can use a Content Credentials-compliant camera to attach the digital signature at image capture, and preserve the chain of provenance through the editing process, but the metadata can still be stripped away if it’s transformed by a CDN at publication. Cloudflare Images’s implementation will ensure the last-mile delivery of Content Credentials to the end user when a site owner or content creator opts to preserve them.”

The connection between the CAI and Cloudflare is strong. Will Allen, Head of AI Control, Privacy, and Media Products at Cloudflare, was previously VP at Adobe and helped establish the C2PA and the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI).

Since Allen saw early deepfakes at Adobe in 2018, he has had “this personal drive to help create a way to establish content provenance.”

“Fast forward to where we are today, and we’ve seen generative AI transform the world. Through the incredible work of many folks at Adobe and people across industries around the globe, we have aligned on this vision that we can establish and cryptographically verify some level of truth — from photons to pixels, to how they travel across the web. I’ve never stopped being obsessed with it, because it feels like unfinished business,” Allen says.

He notes that camera makers and software companies have made considerable strides in the content authenticity and provenance, but the final piece, the distribution of content on the web, was missing. Allen says that even before joining Cloudflare, he was asking the company to implement the C2PA standard. Cloudflare asked Allen why he didn’t just come over and build it. “So that’s what I did,” he says.

Cloudflare’s “Preserve Content Credentials” setting is now available to all users across the global Cloudflare network. It is a massive step forward for widespread adoption of the C2PA standard and Content Credentials.

Image credits: Featured image provided by Cloudflare.