Creative Force embeds a C2PA manifest into assets touched by an AI action in your Workflow. This article explains what a C2PA manifest is, how Creative Force applies it across your Workflows, and how to enable it for your Workspace. For the broader context on why this matters and related upcoming capabilities, see our related article AI Content Tracking & Compliance.
➕ Cloud Automation: C2PA support applies to assets processed through a Cloud Automation step, which requires the Advanced Workflows add-on and is only available in Workflow Engine V2.
Article Overview
A C2PA Manifest is a tamper-evident record– backed by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, the emerging industry standard for content provenance that documents an asset's AI history directly inside the file itself, so it travels with the asset wherever it goes.
A C2PA Manifest records the AI actions taken on an asset, whether it was generated or edited by AI, which tool or model performed the action, and when, in a way that can be independently verified. This gives brands, retail partners, and regulators a way to confirm an asset's AI history without relying on a separate claim made outside the file.
C2PA Manifests also include a Signing Certificate, which is a validation that the details in the Manifest are accurate.
How Creative Force Applies C2PA
Creative Force tracks the AI actions taken on an asset throughout your Workflow, regardless of whether the AI tool or vendor involved writes its own C2PA data. At Asset Delivery, Creative Force ensures assets with AI actions have a complete manifest and singing certificate.
This means an AI-touched asset leaving Creative Force carries valid, verifiable, provenance data even when an intermediate step in your workflow does not preserve its own C2PA data. If a third-party post-production partner (for example, Adobe, Bria, or Gemini) has already attached C2PA data to an asset before returning it to Creative Force, that data is retained.
📝 Note: An asset downloaded before it reaches Asset Delivery may not yet carry a complete, signed manifest. Creative Force writes the final manifest at Delivery.
Enabling C2PA
C2PA is controlled per Workspace, and can be found under Studio Settings.
Navigate to Studio Settings → Workspaces.
Select the Workspace you want to configure.
In the Workspace panel, select the C2PA tab.
Toggle C2PA Provenance to Enabled.
When enabled, Creative Force embeds a verifiable C2PA provenance record into assets that AI creates or edits in this Workspace, so the record of AI involvement travels with each file.
Q: Can I turn it back off for a Workspace later?
A: Yes, but please note it is not retroactive, meaning for assets already produced, no change will be applied to those existing assets.
Supported File Types
C2PA reading and writing are supported for the following formats:
Type | Formats |
Image |
|
Video |
|
Assets outside these formats are delivered normally– Creative Force does not write a manifest for that asset.
Q: Does enabling C2PA change or remove any metadata I already have on my assets?
A: No. C2PA manifests are a separate provenance record embedded in the file; they do not interact with the XMP/IPTC/EXIF metadata fields configured under your Workspace's metadata namespace settings.
Verifying a Manifest
To confirm that a delivered asset carries a valid, signed C2PA manifest, you can open it in a free content credentials viewer.
🗣Tip: Tools such as c2paviewer.com let you drag in a signed asset and inspect its manifest and validation status directly– useful for confirming compliance without needing to inspect the file's raw metadata.
Technical Details
The following section covers manifest structure for readers who want more complex technical details on C2PA Manifests. Knowing this information is not required to enable or use C2PA in Creative Force.
Q: Does writing a manifest affect file size, quality, or processing time?
A: No, the addition of a C2PA Manifest does not have these effects on the file.
Manifest Anatomy
Component | Role |
Manifest | The unit of provenance embedded in the file. A file can contain more than one manifest. |
Claim | The core statement of a manifest– who or what produced this version. This is the part that gets signed. |
Assertions | Statements about the asset, most importantly: Action list (c2pa.created, c2pa.edited, etc) Associated AI Model(Kling3, Gemini, etc) TSubfunction (Image to Video, Virtual Model, etc) |
Ingredients | Refers to input assets with C2PA manifests used to produce the current asset (i.e., an image without a C2PA manifest used in Image to Video is not an ingredient, but an image with a C2PA manifest used in Image to Video is) |
Digital Source Type | Classifies the asset's origin– for example, |
Claim Signature | A digital signature guaranteeing the content has not been altered since signing and that the signer, Creative Force, is traceable. |
Certificate | An X.509 digital certificate that includes the public key used to verify the signature and links back to a trusted Certificate Authority. |
Example Action Entry
A simplified example of a single recorded action, as it appears within a manifest's assertions:
{ "action": "c2pa.edited", "digitalSourceType": "http://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/digitalsourcetype/compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia", "softwareAgent": "Bria AI" }
How Creative Force Aggregates Actions
Because some vendors add to manifests, some strip manifests and add new ones, and some vendors strip manifests and don’t replace them, Creative Force takes an aggregation approach in compiling information for C2PA Manifests. This allows us to serve as an orchestrating entity.
Rather than preserving every vendor's individual manifest as a separate generation, Creative Force maintains the full AI action history for an asset internally and signs one aggregated manifest at Asset Delivery, referencing the asset's original file as an ingredient.
This approach trades a perfectly detailed, generation-by-generation manifest chain for a guarantee: the final delivered asset always carries valid, complete provenance data, even if an intermediate vendor tool stripped or never wrote its own C2PA data.
Q: What happens if my AI vendor doesn't support C2PA?
A: If an asset is returned via a Cloud Automation Step, we will write to a manifest whether one exists or not. Because Creative Force tracks AI actions independently of whether a vendor writes its own C2PA data, the final asset is still signed with a complete action history at Delivery.