As AI transforms marketing, we talk to PageProof CEO Gemma Rann, who offers perspective on verifying content origins and protecting brand credibility.
The tricky evolution of AI in creative context
Generative AI is no longer an experiment in marketing. It has become part of everyday workflows, enabling brands to generate campaign visuals, copy and audio quickly and at scale. As the technology becomes more common, so do questions about transparency and authenticity.
That tension was clear at Cannes Lions 2025, where a shortlisted campaign was withdrawn after jurors discovered AI-generated imagery submitted as “original photography” without clear disclosure. The incident was not just an isolated embarrassment. It served as a reminder of the difficulty, even for industry experts, of verifying what is real in a creative environment that increasingly includes synthetic content.
This growing uncertainty is driving demand for better ways to track and verify where marketing assets come from, how they’re made, and who is responsible for them.
Marketers and agencies have tracked metadata on creative assets for years, but traditional approaches were not designed for the scale or complexity of AI-generated content. What is now gaining momentum is the move to embed clear, standardized provenance data that can travel with files through increasingly fragmented production pipelines.
These updated content credentials aim to answer urgent questions emerging in every brief: Who really made this? Was AI used? What changes were made along the way? By making this information consistent and verifiable, brands can avoid confusion, maintain accountability across teams and build trust with audiences who are more skeptical than ever.
Gemma Rann, CEO and founder of creative approval platform PageProof, describes content credentials as a way to provide “peace-of-mind for everyone involved,” allowing brands to demonstrate whether assets were created by humans, AI or a combination of both. She says this kind of transparency is becoming increasingly important as AI-generated content becomes a standard part of creative production.
“With the huge volume of content being produced and AI becoming more sophisticated, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell what’s authentic and what might have been altered or generated by AI,” she says. “Consumers are developing skepticism about what they see online, making it crucial for brands to have reliable ways to prove authenticity and maintain credibility.”
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For many brands, this need for clarity is also a workflow challenge. Marketing production often involves multiple agencies, freelancers, in-house teams and varied software tools. Assets can pass through many hands before going live, making it hard to track who created them, when they were edited or whether they include AI-generated elements.
Content credentials aim to solve this by providing a consistent way to carry verified information about an asset’s origin, tools used and modifications through the entire creative process.
Rann says PageProof is building this capability into its approval system through a feature called Smart Check. “When you create proofs of campaign assets such as images, PDFs or audio files, Smart Check automatically reveals the authenticity data, who created it, what AI tools were used, how it’s been modified,” she explains. The feature also surfaces other technical details that teams need to verify, including fonts, colors and dimensions.
This level of visibility can help teams understand the origin of assets used in their campaigns, whether they come from in-house designers, agency partners, stock libraries or influencer content.
“There are two important considerations for agencies and brands,” Rann says. “First, checking the origin of the assets being used by designers within the creative. Everyone knows exactly what they’re working with, which helps prevent unwanted surprises impacting a brand’s credibility. The second is that once a final asset has been created, it should be signed to attribute ownership and authenticity using content credentials. This creates audience trust with other content creators and consumers.”
While policymakers are exploring clearer rules around AI disclosure in advertising, content credentials remain a voluntary standard for most brands today. Rann sees early adoption coming from companies that want to stand out on trust and transparency.
“We don’t see forced adoption happening anytime soon,” she says. “Instead, it’s more of an opt-in approach for brands that want to provide transparency and trust around their brand assets, building stronger audience relationships along the way. The savvy brands will adopt content credentials for all generated assets, empowering creatives to prove ownership of their work and, in turn, preserve value in the brand.”
Many creative software providers and media companies are preparing for this shift. Adobe, a founding member of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), has integrated content credentials into tools such as Photoshop and Firefly. Stock photo platforms are labeling AI-generated content. Social media companies are testing disclosure labels for AI-enhanced images.
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Despite these moves, adoption is still uneven. Many brands and agencies lack a formal process for tracking AI use across creative production. But industry observers expect that to change quickly as consumer expectations evolve and the risk of public missteps, like the Cannes incident, becomes more apparent.
One example of this approach is making transparency checks part of routine review and approval workflows instead of treating them as an extra step at the end.
Rann says this reflects the company’s original mission. “The vision of PageProof was to become the backbone of every marketing team and advertising agency to provide an effortless way to review and approve creative work, with transparency checks built in to help creative teams keep up with the pace and complexity of modern production while maintaining clarity about what they are delivering,” she explains.
As brands continue to expand their use of AI in marketing, verifying the origins of creative work is poised to become an industry expectation. Enhanced content credentials may not answer every question about AI in advertising, but they offer brands and agencies a practical way to maintain trust and uphold credibility as technology reshapes the creative process. With AI-driven challenges now moving into all aspects of creative work, including music, images and copy, the need for clear verification is only growing.
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