Provenance, and why it is not authenticity
Provenance is a record of origin and handling. It can say what produced an asset and what happened to it since. It cannot say that the result is truthful, unmanipulated, or what anybody claims it shows. As of 2026-09-12.
| What a provenance record can hold | What it does not establish |
|---|---|
| What produced the asset | That the depiction is accurate |
| When it was produced | That the timestamp is meaningful |
| What happened to it since | That nothing happened before the record began |
| Who signed the record | That the signer was honest |
Inclusion rule. Properties of provenance records as described in published specifications and vendor documentation. Order. Paired, capability on the left and its limit on the right.
1A chain begins where somebody starts one
A record describes handling from the point it was created. Anything done to material before that is outside it, and nothing in the record reveals that there was a before.
Which means a complete-looking chain can describe the second half of a history. That is not a flaw in the mechanism; it is a reason to read a chain as a record of custody rather than as a certificate.
2Signing moves the question to trust in a signer
A verified signature establishes that a named party asserted the contents. Whether that party is careful, honest or compromised is a separate matter, and no cryptography addresses it.
So provenance converts a question about a file into a question about an organisation. That is progress, because organisations can be reasoned about, and it is not an answer.
3Absence proves nothing in either direction
A file with no provenance record may never have had one, or may have lost it to an ordinary re-encode. Those are indistinguishable from the outside, and the second is extremely common.
Which is why a negative result is not usable as evidence. The useful direction is positive: a record that arrives says something, and a record that does not arrive says nothing at all.
4Why the word attracts more weight than it can carry
Provenance sounds like proof, and in a market anxious about generated media a word that sounds like proof travels fast. The specifications themselves are considerably more modest about what they offer.
Reading a vendor sentence about provenance therefore means asking what field is asserted, who signed it, and what happens to it on the way to an audience. All three are frequently unstated.
5Published material behind this entry
A term in this record: what it means, and what the published material says about it, each figure read on 2026-09-12. Related: Content credentials, Watermark.