As part of a global effort to standardize solutions for building trust in online content, Adobe, Arm, the BBC, Intel, Microsoft and Truepic, have formed the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), a joint project to develop technical standards for certifying the source and history of media content.

According to the release issued by Microsoft today, in order to track the origin and evolution of a particular piece of media (including images, videos, audio and documents), member organizations are tasked with “defining what information is associated with each type of asset, how that information is presented and stored, and how evidence of tampering can be identified,” ultimately facilitating the ability to track the creation and evolution of the content in question. Those specifications, which would include things like how the information is stored and how to identify evidence of tampering, will allow both publishers and consumers of their content to more easily identify the manipulation of information.

C2PA currently combines Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) and Project Origin, initiated by Microsoft and the BBC, putting the efforts and respective advances of each group under one roof.

More specifically, the CAI is developing a means for content creators to claim authorship of their content, as well as empower consumers to rate the trustworthiness of what the content they’re consuming. Project Origin is working on a process to track and certify the creation and history of news content, and Truepic has developed “the first native integration of hardware-secured photo capture smartphone technology,” according to the release.

The consortium addresses the continued growth of fake news, misinformation, and online content fraud, facilitating a stronger sense of trust in the content audiences consume, but it also builds a stronger foundation upon which brands can more confidently communicate and advertise to those audiences.