Triad Artists Turn to Blockchain and Provenance Standards to Verify Authorship

Artists in the Triad area of North Carolina are facing challenges in establishing authorship and ownership of their digital works. With the rise of AI-generated media, it's becoming increasingly difficult to verify the authenticity of a creative piece.

The question has become relevant as generative tools produce convincing images, music, and video. Tracing a creative work back to its source is getting harder, making it essential for artists to keep accurate records of their creative process.

Blockchain technology is being used to timestamp creative files, providing proof that a particular version existed at a specific time. For example, if an artist uses the Algorand network, they pay in ALGO tokens, and the dated price of ALGO becomes relevant to the service's cost. However, this alone does not establish ownership.

The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity has released Content Credentials 2.3, which supports live video, plain-text documents, OGG audio, and large AVI files. This open standard allows artists to attach details about a digital file's source and editing history, making it easier for audiences to verify the authenticity of a work.

Independent artists should preserve source material related to their commissioned, exhibited, or widely shared work. For example, musicians may keep session files and early mixes, while designers often have layered working documents that contain more detail than the flattened image delivered to a client.