You can now make a convincing image of nearly anything from a sentence. That’s a lot of fun, and it’s a real problem for anyone who runs a gallery or a newsroom.
The old test was whether a photograph looked real. That test is failing. The new question is where the picture came from, and whether you can prove it.
Content credentials
One approach is provenance metadata. The C2PA standard, backed by companies including Adobe, Microsoft and camera makers, lets a device or program attach a signed record to a file: what made it, what edited it, when. The label is often called Content Credentials.
It’s promising, and it has limits. The data can be stripped when a file is re-saved or screenshotted. Many images will simply never have it. And its absence doesn’t mean a picture is fake.
What a gallery can do now
Label AI-generated images clearly, every time. Keep original files and note their source. When a photo matters, ask the photographer for the raw file or a second frame from the same moment.
Trust will come from track records more than from software. A gallery that tells you where things come from, consistently, earns it slowly.