At a time when journalist newsrooms around the world are trying to combat deepfakes generated with artificial intelligence, Leica has launched the first camera to incorporate a secure metadata system. In collaboration with the Content Authenticy Initiative (CAI), the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), the iconic photography house has created the Leica M11-P, a model that ensures the traceability of photographs and copyrights. , two aspects that the authors of false information violate.
The content credentials system (Content Credentials, in English) is a series of universal standards and technical specifications to demonstrate the origin of photographs, videos or any type of audiovisual content. It was patented by a group of authors, technologists, journalists and activists with the aim of addressing the authenticity of content and alleviating the effects of digital misinformation.
The Leica M11-P attaches content credentials to photos from the moment they are captured. The Content Credentials system collects the classic metadata corresponding to the time, location and technical details of the photograph and attaches it to a type of secure, encrypted manifesto that links it to the original photograph and its author.
From then on, content credentials will accompany the photograph, creating a chain of authenticity from camera to cloud that allows photographers to gain a greater degree of control over their art, story and context. Additionally, professional users will be able to verify these content credentials online.
Thanks to this metadata, every time someone edits those photos, the changes will be recorded and automatically included in the encrypted manifest we talked about earlier. This constantly updated database accompanies photographs shared on social networks such as Flickr or Pinterest, very useful resources often used as sources of images by journalists. Thus, users who find these photos online will only have to click on the ‘CR’ icon that appears in the upper right corner to verify all the information about their origin before downloading them.
Apart from this, the M11-P has excellent technical qualities. Leica maintains its classic aluminum design that makes this a lightweight model and offers a BSI CMOS sensor with triple resolution technology (60, 36 and 18MP) for flexibility and impressive details in photographs. With 256 GB of storage, it is true that Leica’s latest camera has a prohibitive starting price for the most modest photographers: 8,800 euros.
