WITNESS convenes experts in Geneva and launches new report on AI, content authenticity, and surveillance risks
On July 8, WITNESS and the Forum on Information and Democracy hosted Trustworthy by Design: AI, Content Authenticity, and the Future of Reliable Information, a convening that brought together experts from human rights, journalism, humanitarian action, technology, research, policymaking, and standards development to discuss one of the defining challenges of the AI era: how to safeguard reliable information while protecting privacy, safety, and human rights.
Across the discussions, speakers emphasized that technical solutions alone will not be enough to strengthen trust in the digital information ecosystem. They highlighted the importance of collaboration among governments, civil society, technology companies, journalists, humanitarian organizations, and standards bodies, while stressing that governance and accountability must evolve alongside AI technologies. They also emphasized that efforts to strengthen information integrity must protect privacy, civic space, and human rights.
The program featured opening remarks from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and WITNESS, with Mahsa Alimardani, Associate Director at WITNESS, and Bruna Martins dos Santos, Policy and Advocacy Manager at WITNESS, guiding discussions throughout the day. The event also included the launch of WITNESS’s new report, presented by Jacobo Castellanos, AI Infrastructure & Governance Manager at WITNESS, alongside discussions featuring representatives from governments, international organizations, civil society, journalism, humanitarian organizations, and the technology sector.
The event took place during a week of major international discussions on AI governance in Geneva, alongside the Global Dialogue on AI Governance, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum, and the AI for Good Summit. It created an opportunity for organizations and experts working across sectors to exchange perspectives, identify shared challenges, and strengthen collaboration around the future of trustworthy information.
Report Launch
As part of the convening, WITNESS launched its new report, C2PA Content Credentials and the Surveillance Risk: Adversarial Scenarios and Governance Gaps in the Content Provenance Ecosystem, which can be accessed here. The report examines technologies known as content authenticity and provenance systems, which help verify where digital content comes from and how it has been created or edited. While these technologies can help strengthen trust in digital content, they can also create new risks for privacy and human rights if deployed without appropriate governance safeguards.
Drawing on seven adversarial scenarios, the report explores how technologies that verify the origin and history of digital content could enable identity disclosure, behavioral profiling, and surveillance in certain deployment contexts. It argues that technical standards alone are not enough and that robust governance, accountability, and human rights safeguards must be built into the future of content authenticity infrastructure. The findings and recommendations are underpinned by an accompanying research paper, available here, which presents the technical research and analysis behind the report.
Presenting the report, Jacobo Castellanos emphasized that the opportunity is to build technology infrastructure that “does two things at once,” helping authenticate digital content while protecting the people creating and documenting it. “Provenance is a key tool for reclaiming trust,” Castellanos said, adding that the technology must “live up to that potential” by putting the right safeguards in place to prevent misuse, surveillance, and harm.
Castellanos also called for greater cross-sector collaboration, arguing that governance innovation is as important as technical innovation. He encouraged policymakers, standards bodies, civil society, journalists, humanitarian organizations, and technology companies to work together while the content provenance ecosystem is still taking shape.