SAN DIEGO—Verance, a global watermarking company that powers AI provenance and broadband features for broadcast television, is launching a new solution based on open watermarking standards that will help companies combat misinformation and and AI-generated disinformation.
The solution enables social media platforms to authenticate broadcast content in user uploads, enhancing public trust in media and reducing the societal risks of disinformation. It uses Verance Aspect to enable broadcast content to be reliably authenticated by social media platforms, devices and disinformation analysts.
“These tools we are providing to enable reliable authentication of broadcast news content through open standards like ATSC watermarking and C2PA provenance are essential,” explained Nil Shah, CEO of Verance. “They represent a significant step toward maintaining public trust and ensuring the integrity of the information that shapes our world in this contentious election year and beyond.”
The technology stems from fully open watermarking standards developed and published by the U.S.‑based broadcast standards organization ATSC and the provenance authentication technology standards consortium C2PA. Each standards organization has broad participation across the global media, technology and consumer electronics sectors.
Using these industry standards, broadcast adopters of Verance Aspect can enable recipients of their content to determine whether it has been modified, as well as to locate an authentic version of the published asset. This validation step, which can be fully automated, allows the recipient to determine whether the media seen misrepresents what was originally broadcast, Verance reported.
Major broadcasters across the U.S., including Graham Media Group, Gray Television, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Capitol Broadcasting Company have already deployed ATSC watermarking using Verance Aspect. ATSC watermarking has also been incorporated into the DVB and HbbTV interactive television specifications, which are used in dozens of countries across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands.
Additionally, C2PA is beginning to be adopted as a means of authenticating content on social media platforms, with LinkedIn and TikTok having recently announced plans to use it to authenticate media uploaded by users.
Verance Aspect employs ATSC watermarking to access C2PA manifest services for broadcast content. C2PA authentication requires signed metadata that cannot be transmitted through existing content distribution paths. ATSC watermarking enables recipients of broadcast content to locate the absent C2PA metadata by embedding imperceptible URLs throughout the broadcast audio and video that survives any distribution path.
The ATSC watermark standards have supported metadata-driven solutions like C2PA since their inception in 2017. The recent release of C2PA specifications (v2.1) introduces support for watermark-based recovery of C2PA metadata and identifies ATSC watermarking as a compatible technology.
This standards-based approach enables broadcasters and platforms to create interoperable implementations of the underlying technologies, encouraging global cooperation on addressing disinformation challenges accelerated by rapid deployment of powerful generative AI systems.
A number of broadcasters applauded the initiative. “Concern about deep fakes in the media is a growing concern for the public and political leaders,” said Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV. “Good news: the broadcast industry proactively addressed this issue years ago and it’s being implemented now. The NextGen TV ecosystem provides consumers with security assurance for over-the-air television broadcasts. Extending that assurance to social media and web browsing using ATSC watermarking and C2PA provenance is an essential next step to maintain consumer trust in broadcast news.”
“At Gray, we believe in the power of trustworthy journalism,” David Burke, senior vice president and CTO of Gray Television, added. “By integrating Verance Aspect watermarking with C2PA standards, we’re not just protecting our content; we’re reinforcing the credibility of broadcast news in an age where AI-driven misinformation is a significant threat. This technology is an important part of ensuring the public receives verified, unaltered information.”
“As AI continues to evolve, so too must our strategies for safeguarding the truth. This collaboration is significant as the industry battles against disinformation,” said Christina Hartman, vice president and head of Scripps News for the E.W. Scripps Company. Scripps works with Verance through its relationship with Pearl.
Mike Kralec, senior vice president and CTO for Sinclair, said, “Ensuring our viewers have the highest confidence in our programming is critical to our business. We believe C2PA, through its ability to authenticate the name of content creators or distribution services, can play a central role in future end-to-end technical architectures and workflows. We applaud C2PA and Verance for recognizing that authentication of creators and distributors is absolutely essential to the advanced workflows our industry will rely on in the future.”
“We are pleased to have the opportunity to cooperate with C2PA and our membership on extending the use of ATSC standards to ensure that broadcast content can be presented to viewers with an assurance of authenticity,” added ATSC president Madeleine Noland.