Road sign pointing to Provenance in a desert setting with mountains in the background.

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At the Media Provenance Summit in Bergen on September 22, a lot was said and shown about producing transparent and indelible provenance information. Little, if anything, was said about how the general public would receive and understand that information. Neeltje Berger and Viktor Kewenig of Microsoft Research presented “Design LedContinue Reading

Media Provenance Summit 2026 presentation slide in Bergen, Norway.

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Bergen, one year later: On September 22, the Media Provenance Summit organized by the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) and Media Cluster Norway returned to Bergen, almost as reliably as a season. The yearly comparison gives some valuable insight into how the space evolves. In twelve months, almost everything neededContinue Reading

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For most of photography’s history, a photograph was its own proof: if you had a picture of something, it had probably happened. AI has ended that, producing images the eye cannot tell from real photographs, which is an acute problem for anyone whose work depends on a photograph being believed.Continue Reading

Person examining photographic negatives for provenance verification.

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Images cost nothing to produce now and arrive in unlimited numbers. The usual conclusion is that they have become disposable, and that being disposable, they can no longer be trusted. The facts in that description are right. The conclusion moves too fast, because trusting a photograph has always meant twoContinue Reading

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For two hundred years, ever since Niépce left a pewter plate in a window for the better part of a day, a photograph was something you could interrogate yourself. You looked at it, and you decided. The light behaved, or it betrayed a seam. The shadows agreed with the room,Continue Reading

An image showing a building with multiple fire damage marks and smoke in the sky, indicating a recen.

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War compresses everything, including the truth. The moment the first missile lands, demand for images spikes, while the supply stays thin. Photographers can only be in so many places, and the most newsworthy places are the hardest and most dangerous to reach. Editors need pictures in minutes, not hours. InContinue Reading

Bright digital billboard displaying EU AI Act in a busy city at night.

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Since every company in the world communicates with visuals, this act affects everyone Two months out from application, Article 50 of the EU AI Act is generating more anxiety than clarity in the teams that produce and publish visual content. The date to remember is August 2, 2026. Systems placedContinue Reading

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The current crop of AI image-authenticity tools tends to do one thing. You upload a photograph, the tool returns a number. 73% likely AI-generated. 0.21 confidence of manipulation. The number is supposed to settle the question. It doesn’t, of course, because the number is a statistical probability that the imageContinue Reading

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….. if they understood what they actually have For two decades, photo agencies have been selling pixels. The price of those pixels has been falling for almost as long, and generative AI has now removed the floor entirely. The conversation inside the industry has narrowed to a single question: howContinue Reading