What is the C2PA standard and what does it enable?
C2PA is an open technical standard that allows publishers, companies, and others to embed metadata in media for verifying its origin and related information. C2PA isn’t just for AI-generated images. The same standard is also being adopted by camera manufacturers, news organizations, and others to certify the source and history, or provenance, of media content.
Learn more about C2PA.
What is SynthID and what does it enable?
SynthID is an invisible watermarking technology that embeds a signal directly into generated media. Unlike metadata, the signal is part of the image itself and may persist through some edits or transformations.
SynthID provides an additional provenance signal alongside C2PA metadata.
What is OpenAI’s implementation ?
Images generated with ChatGPT, Codex, and our API include both C2PA metadata and SynthID watermarks.
These two systems reinforce each other. C2PA helps content carry detailed context; SynthID helps preserve a signal when metadata does not survive. Watermarking can be more durable through transformations like screenshots, while metadata can provide more information than a watermark alone.
How can I check whether an image was generated with OpenAI tools?
You can visit openai.com/verify to check whether an uploaded image contains supported provenance signals associated with images generated by OpenAI tools.
After you upload an image, the tool will look for signs that the image originated from OpenAI, including a SynthID watermark that originates from OpenAI, or a trusted C2PA manifest that originates from OpenAI. If it finds either or both, the image was generated by OpenAI tools. Errors can happen, but they are rare.
Note that the tool only confirms whether the image was generated by OpenAI. It does not confirm that the image is accurate, unedited, legally owned, or presented in the correct context.
What if no signal is found?
If no signal is detected, it means the tool did not find supported provenance signals in the uploaded image.
The image could still have been generated by OpenAI if:
Metadata was stripped
The watermark was degraded
The image came from an unsupported source
The image was created before these signals were available