As concern grows that images on the internet have been wildly manipulated by AI, chipmaker Qualcomm is doubling down on authenticity. The company wants to prove that the images taken on your phone look the same as when you clicked the shutter button.
At Snapdragon Summit 2025, Qualcomm debuted its new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, a powerful chip that will be featured in next year’s top Android phones. Among its improvements is a digital content authentication standard called C2PA, which digitally watermarks photos and video footage to show how much AI, if any, was used in the final product.
In a world of deepfakes, digital content companies may increasingly adopt the open C2PA technical standard to prove veracity.
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“As generative AI grows, and as the need in social media grows to have photographs be understood and be authentic, I think [phonemaker support for C2PA] will grow,” said Judd Heape, vice president of product management at Qualcomm.
Qualcomm has teamed up with Truepic, a San Diego-based company that develops digital image verification software, to integrate its C2PA solution into Snapdragon mobile chips. The chipmaker is now streamlining the process, allowing phonemakers to sign up for Qualcomm’s software package to secure this functionality in their devices.
The caveat is that companies still have to choose to integrate the authenticity software into their devices. Once they do, users will have their photos digitally watermarked to the C2PA standard by default.
Whether this streamlining will be enough for the authentication to show up on more phones remains to be seen. At least one device manufacturer is moving toward integrating C2PA, Heape said, but declined to identify which.
“I can’t say who, but yes, there are [manufacturers] who are working with us and also working on their own to integrate C2PA,” Heape said.
Read more: Future Android Phones Will Have a Surprising Way to Prove Your Video Isn’t AI
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