Leica Launches World’s “First Camera with Content Credentials”

This image above of the New York City skyline was created with the Leica M11-P and now includes Content Credentials at the point of capture to protect the authenticity of images. At the top right of the image, preview its Content Credentials digital nutrition label including information such as name, dates, changes made and tools used.

By Santiago Lyon, Head of Advocacy and Education, CAI

We are thrilled to announce that industry-leading camera manufacturer Leica is officially launching the new M11-P camera — the world’s first camera with Content Credentials built-in.

This is a significant milestone for the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) and the future of photojournalism: It will usher in a powerful new way for photojournalists and creatives to combat misinformation and bring authenticity to their work and consumers, while pioneering widespread adoption of Content Credentials.

With manipulated content and misinformation more on the rise than ever, trust in the digital ecosystem has never been more critical. We are entering a new era of creativity, where generative AI is expanding access to powerful new workflows and unleashing our most imaginative ideas. The Leica M11-P launch will advance the CAI’s goal of empowering photographers everywhere to attach Content Credentials to their images at the point of capture, creating a chain of authenticity from camera to cloud and enabling photographers to maintain a degree of control over their art, story and context.

A photograph created with the Leica M11-P and its Content Credential.

Leica has implemented the global Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) standard in the M11-P camera so that each image is captured with secure metadata. This means it carries information such as camera make and model, as well as content-specific information including who captured an image and when, and how they did so. Each image captured will receive a digital signature, and the authenticity of images can be easily verified by visiting contentcredentials.org/verify or in the Leica FOTOS app.

This is a watershed moment for trust and transparency for photographers and creatives – its significance cannot be overstated. This is the realization of a vision the CAI and our members first set out four years ago, transforming principles of trust and provenance into consumer-ready technology.

With the integration of the CAI framework, Leica will help combat the pervasive issues mis/disinformation and preserve trust in digital content and sources. Further, with this integration, recent announcements at MAX, and the broad availability of our free open-source tools powering them, Content Credentials are seeing accelerated adoption around the world, including among photojournalists, news outlets, creative professionals, everyday consumers, social media influencers, artists and innovators.

Adobe co-founded the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) in 2019 to help combat the threat of misinformation and help creators get credit for their work. Today the CAI is a coalition of nearly 2,000 members, including Leica Camera, AFP, the Associated Press, the BBC, Getty Images, Microsoft, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and more, all working together to add a verifiable layer of transparency and trust to content online – via secure metadata called Content Credentials.

Between the tremendous momentum in attracting new members and the growing adoption of Content Credentials by leaders spanning multiple industries, the CAI is ensuring that technological innovations are built on ethical foundations.

Snapshot: How Content Credentials Works

• Transparency at the point of capture: We believe the chain of authenticity is strongest at the moment a piece of media is created — being able to verify the circumstances of an image’s origin is the foundation for knowing whether to trust it.
• Get credit for your photography work: Content Credentials enable photojournalists and creatives to assert credit for their work, ensuring that wherever one of their images goes, their identity travels indelibly with it.
• Bring trust to your digital content with a digital nutrition label: Content Credentials are the digital nutrition label and most widely adopted industry standard for content of all kinds, and the foundation for increased trust and transparency online.

Leica’s M11-P camera will be available globally at all Leica Stores, the Leica Online Store and authorized dealers, starting today. To learn more, please visit: https://leica-camera.com/m11-p

Content Credentials in Adobe Photoshop is enabled and the image from a Leica M11-P is imported. Here, you can preview the Content Credentials identifying an ingredient from the Leica camera signifying a Content Credential exists.

The photograph is significantly altered using the Sky Replacement tool in Adobe Photoshop. This edit becomes part of the file’s Content Credentials.

The edited image is exported from Adobe Photoshop and inspected using Verify (contentcredentials.org/verify), a CAI website that reads and surfaces Content Credentials where consumers can verify and inspect changes made to an asset.