Episode 23: Eric Scouten - Adobe’s Leading Role in the Content Authenticity Boom
On today’s episode we talked with Eric Scouten, Senior Engineering Manager at Adobe, who has been working for the last four years on solving content authenticity. What does that mean? We’ll get into it in the episode, but suffice it to say that it’s an effort to bring trust to content online.
Was the pope really photographed in that puffy jacket? Was the photo of a war zone really taken this week, or is that from several years ago? And we’ll get into how to identify the identity of the individual or business behind the content, in a privacy-preserving way.
We talk about adoption of the C2PA standard, how the content authenticity initiative recruited so many of the most influential tech and media platforms, and how Adobe built the conviction to ship the first versions into production despite a cold start problem.
We also talk about the user experience of content authenticity, both from the creator side and consumer side, and some thornier issues including potential for censorship and deceit.
This is a fascinating episode into an emerging standard that I believe will be an important part of all our lives over the coming years, and example of incredible innovation coming from a large technology company.
Follow the links to learn more about the Content Authenticity Alliance and the C2PA standard.
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Video timestamps from Eric Scouten's interview
You can watch the full video interview on our YouTube channel, or skip to the timestamps below to find the sections that are most interesting to you.
2:52 – Introduction to content authenticity and the C2PA standard
4:19 – Defining C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity)
5:07 – How content is tied to individual creators
6:52 – How C2PA differs from other cryptographic assertions like an NFT
9:21 – Building the industry coalition to kickstart adoption for the Content Authenticity Initiative
10:49 – Adobe’s foresight in 2018 regarding the need to address misinformation online
12:43 – The culture at Adobe that allowed them to see need for content authenticity in the age of generative AI
14:12 – The leadership vision to implement the C2PA standard implemented in production
15:22 – How the Adobe team overcame the cold-start problem
17:17 – Adobe’s strategy to prioritize outreach and advocacy in the media industry
18:45 – The user experience considerations of launching C2PA in Photoshop
21:07 – The end-user experience of consuming content credentials
22:54 – How Adobe approaches trust decisions related to content credentials
24:57 – Selective disclosure and choice in asserting user identity
27:07 – How content credentials could transform trust on the internet
29:44 – The paradox of choice that’s holding back the SSI space
32:33 – Eric’s vision for the future of identity
34:09 – How to stay in touch with the Content Authenticity work
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