The Media Provenance Council establishes and governs the global standard for cryptographic chain-of-custody authentication of photos, video, and audio — for courts, newsrooms, archives, and history.
Generative AI has made it trivially easy to create photorealistic images, convincing audio, and fabricated video from scratch. Tools for detecting manipulation are reactive, inconsistent, and easily defeated.
Existing metadata standards address part of the problem — but none establish what an appellation like Champagne or Tequila establishes: a governance-backed certification that makes authenticity mean something socially, editorially, and legally.
The Media Provenance Council fills that gap. Not by preventing fabrication — but by making authentic media verifiably, permanently distinct from everything else.
MPC-certified cameras and smartphones embed a hardware security chip that cryptographically signs every image at the moment of capture, tied to a device key registered in MPC's public registry.
Certified editing platforms implement the MPC SDK. Every edit — brightness, crop, composite — increments the provenance stamp in the correct category, signed and permanent.
Newsrooms, courts, and archives verify the MPC stamp against the public registry. Chain intact = MPC Authenticated. Chain broken = it simply isn't.
Champagne doesn't prevent other sparkling wines from existing. It defines what may legitimately claim the name — backed by law, geography, and institutional trust.
MPC does the same for media. Screenshots, re-photographs, AI-generated images — none are prevented from circulating. They simply can never call themselves MPC Authenticated. In contexts where that matters — courts, newsrooms, history — that distinction is everything.
MPC covers all primary capture media — extending beyond the photo-focused work of existing initiatives.
Capture an image, apply operations, then screenshot to see the chain break permanently.
For news organizations that need to publish authenticated images with confidence — and tell their audiences when they can't.
For courts, law enforcement, and forensic investigators who need tamper-evident records that meet evidentiary standards.
For national archives, libraries, and museums that need to distinguish original captures from later alterations — permanently.
C2PA defines how provenance is recorded. MPC defines what it means to be certified, and what classifications carry legal and editorial weight.
MPC adopts C2PA's technical encoding format as its baseline. We don't reinvent the cryptographic standard — we build the governance and certification infrastructure that gives it social, legal, and institutional meaning. C2PA is the format. MPC is the appellation.
MPC is pursuing a formal liaison relationship with the C2PA steering committee — modeled on W3C's relationships with ISO, IETF, and ECMA. C2PA-certified hardware becomes eligible for MPC certification review, reducing friction for manufacturers across both ecosystems.
MPC is forming its Founding Steering Committee. We're looking for partners in journalism, hardware, software, law, and archival science who share the conviction that provenance is the next critical infrastructure for truth.
Pilot MPC verification in your intake workflow. Shape the standard from the inside.
Be among the first certified capture devices. Differentiate on authenticity.
Help define the evidentiary and regulatory framework for MPC certification.