Photo: Richard Butler

One of the announcements to quietly sneak out of Adobe's annual MAX conference this week in Miami comes from Nikon, which announced that it is currently developing firmware to add a feature called Content Credentials, which is based on the standards developed by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), to the Z6III mirrorless camera.

"Nikon is committed to developing solutions, including compliance with C2PA standards, with the goal of protecting individuals and enterprises in the imaging industry, and ultimately society, from any unfavorable results caused by fake images and/or unauthorized use of images," states the company's official press release. "Our aim is to implement a mechanism that preserves original, unaltered image data recorded using the camera, making it easier to verify the authenticity of images and protect the rights of photographers."

Nikon has been working on content authenticity since at least 2022, revealing earlier this year that it's working with Agence France-Presse (AFP) to test a digital watermark function as an additional layer to the C2PA digital signature. Nikon also reiterated the importance of content authenticity when DPReview visited Nikon headquarters for an interview in February in which we discussed the challenges of generative AI.

In an interview at Nikon's headquarters in Tokyo earlier this year, Yusuke Adachi, an executive from Nikon's Imaging Business Unit, reiterated the importance of having a system to validate the authenticity of images. Photo: Dale Baskin

"We believe that generative AI can leave a positive impact on both cameras and the industry as a whole, but at the same time, it’s been causing issues such as fake images or fraudulent use of images, which leads to the issue of credibility and confidence," Yusuke Adachi, an executive from Nikon's Imaging Business Unit, told us. "In order to grapple with these issues, we’ve been working on technology to record histories of captured images. Right now, we’re in the demonstration phase to verify and validate the efficacy of these functions we’re trying to deploy together with AFP (Agence France-Presse)."

According to Nikon, the firmware currently under development for the Z6III should reflect the results of testing the system's practicality as part of a news agency workflow and is expected to be released to some news and other agencies in mid-2025. Nikon did not indicate when these features may be available to non-agency photographers.