Adobe Photoshop will soon be testing a technology that can tag original content so you can see where it originated. 

Adobe announced the Content Authenticity Initiative at its Adobe Max conference last year where we reported that it was being developed with the help of Twitter and The New York Times.

Now the system is nearly ready for testing and Adobe has released a whitepaperthat says it will be tested in Photoshop this year. And more organisations are on board, with the BBC, CBC/Radio Canada, Microsoft, University of California, Truepic and Witness also joining the effort. 

Authenticity of content is a hot topic currently, with TikTok having recently announced it was banning deepfake content in the lead-up to the US election and other social networks tying themselves in knots battling misinformation. But the Content Authenticity Initiative proposal is a little different than other retrospective systems because it works to label the original content (with due credit) and then alert users when that media is doctored. Adobe wants to promote an open standard for secure metadata which would be attached to images shared on, say, Twitter or Facebook. In other words, the metadata wouldn't be able to be easily modified. 

"Efforts to address content authenticity have largely focused on using AI to detect deep fakes and other altered media," says Adobe's Andy Parsons who co-authored the whitepaper.

"And, that effort is important. But shouldn’t there also be a transparent way to inform the public who created the original photos and videos, and how these assets were changed over time? Isn’t it equally important that creative professionals and photojournalists receive credit for their work?"