Speaker: Professor John Collomosse, University of Surrey
Abstract: Countering modern disinformation requires moving beyond AI detection toward embedded trust signals that travel with content. In this talk, I present media provenance as an approach for encoding verifiable information about origin and modification directly into media assets. I will describe our work on embedding durable provenance signals using digital watermarking, content fingerprinting, and cryptographically signed metadata (C2PA) enabling provenance information to persist across common transformations and distribution channels. Beyond its role in content authenticity, I will show how provenance can also underpin new models for consent and value creation in the age of generative AI, including the use of causal data attribution and decentralised registries to ensure recognition and reward for creators and collection owners whose work contributes to model training.
Bio: Professor John Collomosse is the founder and director of DECaDE, the UKRI Research Centre for the Decentralised Digital Economy led by the University of Surrey. He is a Senior Principal Scientist at Adobe Research where he directs Adobe’s research programme for the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), and two cross-industry task forces within the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) standards body. John’s research intersects Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), with focus on media provenance to fight misinformation and online harms, and on improving data integrity and attribution for responsible AI. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Bath, and is a fellow of the IET, BCS and Royal Society of Arts. He is a member of the UKRI SETB advisory group, DCMS Creative Industries Council, and from 2008-2014 was a member of the strategic advisory teams (SATs) for the EPSRC ICT and UKRI Digital Economy programmes.