Quality seal for the authenticity of images - laif foundation for independent photojournalism

For real images. Against disinformation. For a strong democracy.

Every day we see countless photos in the news and on social media. But not all pictures show the truth.

Even today, most new images are generated using artificial intelligence. Manipulated photos and false information endanger our democracy and trust in the media.

Our seal stands for genuine, unadulterated photography. So that you can recognize at a glance: This picture is genuine.

In this way, we ensure that the public receives reliable information and together we protect the freedom of the press.

Credible sources

The seal is based on a voluntary commitment by media professionals, media companies, agencies and publishers, as well as content creators and news influencers, to clearly defined journalistic and ethical principles. The seal companies are subject to monitoring by an independent body and a community reporting system.

Put simply, these “Trusted Sources” guarantee end customers that images have been created by people and that their content has not been manipulated. The seal thus serves companies as a strong public statement against fake news and disinformation and at the same time as a qualitative differentiation from competitors.

What we do

Communicate, convince and build alliances.

In over 40 years, laif has built up a very high photojournalistic reputation and a worldwide partner and media network. This makes us one of the few institutions with the content-related prerequisites to establish and control such a seal of quality.

Your help makes the difference

With your donation you enable:

The further development of our guidelines and test procedures.
Training courses for journalists.
The dissemination of the seal in the media and companies.

Every support counts – together we protect credible visual media.

Technological approaches

To support the important development of technological standards at the same time, laif is a member of the international “Content Authenticity Initiative” (CAI), which was founded in 2022 by the New York Times, Adobe and Twitter. Over 5,000 members have now joined the initiative, including almost all well-known camera manufacturers, many technology companies and, for example, the BBC, dpa, STERN and Bundesdruckerei.

Technical standards such as “Content Credentials” can also be used by seal customers, but are not part of the seal itself.

What are content credentials

Content Authenticity Initiative

The international C2PA standard (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) is being created and further developed on the basis of the CAI proposals.

It defines the technical specifications for “content credentials” and ensures that various applications and platforms can read and verify them.

Content credentials are largely tamper-proof metadata that document the origin and processing of digital content.

For example, they store information about the author, the creation date and any changes made.

In our view, content credentials are currently the most promising and most widespread approach to making the origin and processing steps carried out on media files traceable.

Taking into account typical user behavior, however, content credentials do not provide easily recognizable proof as to whether an image is an authentic photo according to ethical and journalistic principles.

Hardly any user will open the metadata for each image when scrolling through their social media feeds.

Just a very simple and unambiguous marker that guarantees the audience that a photo counter-drawn in this way is an unadulterated representation of reality.

This is where we come in with the quality seal for the authenticity of images.