Provenance & authenticity
AI Image Metadata Checker
This AI image metadata checker inspects an image's EXIF and XMP fields for the signals that distinguish AI-generated images from camera photos — C2PA content credentials, generator tags, and missing camera data.
Drop a file here, click to browse, or paste
How to read the results for AI signals
Start with the XMP group in the results table above — this is where C2PA Content Credentials and most generator-identifying tags live when they exist. Look specifically for fields referencing "C2PA," "Content Credentials," a named model or platform, or a "Creator Tool" / "Software" value pointing at a known generation service. If any of these are present, that's direct, tool-asserted evidence of AI involvement in producing the file.
Next, check the EXIF group. Real camera photos almost always carry a cluster of physical capture fields — lens model, focal length, exposure time, ISO, aperture — because a camera sensor records these automatically. AI-generated images have no physical sensor, so a complete or near-complete absence of this cluster on an otherwise photorealistic image is a secondary signal worth weighing, though it isn't conclusive on its own since some cameras and editing pipelines also strip this data.
Why this isn't a definitive verdict
Metadata-based detection has an inherent asymmetry: its presence is strong evidence, but its absence proves very little, since any metadata (real or fabricated) can be stripped, edited, or never embedded in the first place by a generation tool that doesn't implement C2PA. Treat a positive C2PA or generator-tag match as high-confidence evidence, and treat a lack of any metadata as inconclusive rather than proof of a human origin.
As with every tool on this site, the entire inspection happens locally in your browser — useful if you're checking a sensitive or unpublished image and don't want a copy of it sitting on a third-party server just to answer a provenance question.
Frequently asked questions
It can provide strong evidence, but not absolute proof. Some AI tools (like those adopting the C2PA Content Credentials standard) embed explicit provenance data naming the generating model. Others embed nothing at all, and metadata can always be stripped or altered, so absence of AI markers doesn't prove a human origin.