Authenticated Contradictions from Desynchronized Provenance and Watermarking
arXiv:2603.02378v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Cryptographic provenance standards such as C2PA and invisible watermarking are positioned as complementary defenses for content authentication, yet the two verification layers are technically independent: neither conditions on the output of the other. This work formalizes and empirically demonstrates the $textit{Integrity Clash}$, a condition in which a digital asset carries a cryptographically valid C2PA manifest asserting human authorship while its pixels simultaneously carry a watermark identifying it as AI-generated, with both signals passing […]