AI Transparency

How Autoenhance labels and documents every AI-edited image so you can meet EU and California AI-transparency rules — what we disclose, how your copyright is handled, and how anyone can verify it.

Autoenhance uses AI to enhance and restage property photos. New rules in the EU and California increasingly require AI-edited images to be disclosed as AI content — usually as machine-readable metadata inside the file — so it's clear the picture has been altered by AI.

To make this effortless, every AI-processed image we produce is automatically labelled and documented — you don't have to do anything extra. This page explains, in plain terms, what we disclose, how your copyright is protected, and how anyone can verify it. Where it helps, we include the technical specifics your developers or compliance team may need.

This page explains how our features support transparency requirements. It is not legal advice — confirm your own obligations with your legal or compliance team.

Why this matters

Two laws are driving this, with similar rules emerging elsewhere:

• The EU AI Act (Article 50). From August 2026, images that are AI-generated or AI-manipulated must be marked in a machine-readable way, and people must be able to tell the content was AI-altered.

• California (AB 723). AI-generated or AI-altered images must carry machine-readable metadata identifying them as AI content — a hidden disclosure embedded in the file, rather than a visible label.

Both laws are satisfied by the hidden, machine-readable disclosure we embed in every AI export. We also offer an optional visible label for cases where you want an at-a-glance disclosure on the image itself.

The three layers of disclosure

We disclose AI use in three complementary ways:

Layer	Visible to a person?	On by default?	Best for
1. Visible "AI Modified" label	Yes	Optional	An at-a-glance disclosure on the image itself
2. Embedded metadata	No (readable by software)	Yes	Machine-readable disclosure inside the file
3. Content Credentials (C2PA)	No (verifiable)	Yes	Tamper-evident, cryptographic proof of origin

1. Visible "AI Modified" label

A small "AI MODIFIED" badge (the EU-style disclosure icon) placed in the corner of the image. It's the most obvious, human-readable form of disclosure.

Turn it on by adding ?visible_disclosure=true when you download an enhanced image:

GET https://api.autoenhance.ai/v3/images/{image_id}/enhanced?visible_disclosure=true

2. Embedded metadata

We write standard photo-metadata tags into every AI-enhanced or restaged export, stating that the image was AI-modified by Autoenhance. This is invisible to someone looking at the photo, but any metadata tool can read it, and it uses the same industry-standard fields recognised by Adobe, Google and news agencies.

The human-readable summary reads like this:

AI Modified Image by Autoenhance.ai using Autoenhance v5.0 on 2026-07-06.

For restaged images (where AI adds elements such as a new sky or furniture), it reads:

AI Modified Image with AI-generated elements by Autoenhance.ai using Autoenhance v5.0 on 2026-07-06.

We write the same disclosure across EXIF, IPTC and XMP so it survives no matter which of these standards a given piece of software happens to read.

3. Content Credentials (C2PA)

We also embed Content Credentials — a cryptographically signed record following the C2PA standard backed by Adobe, Microsoft, the BBC, camera manufacturers and others.

Where plain metadata can be edited or stripped, Content Credentials are tamper-evident: the record is sealed to the exact image, so any later change breaks the seal and a verifier will flag it. The credential records that Autoenhance produced the image, what was done to it (an AI edit, and any added elements), and the original photo it started from.

Content Credentials signing is rolling out across exports. The embedded metadata (layer 2) and the visible label (layer 1) are available today.

What we disclose

Everything we embed, in plain terms and with the exact technical location for your developers:

What we disclose	Plain meaning	Where it lives (technical)
AI system & version	Which AI product and version edited the image (e.g. Autoenhance v5.0)	EXIF:Software, XMP:CreatorTool = Autoenhance/<version>; also in the caption
AI modification statement	A sentence saying the image was AI-modified, and whether AI elements were added	EXIF:UserComment, IPTC:Caption-Abstract, XMP-dc:description
Digital source type	An industry-standard code marking it as a mix of a real photo and AI	XMP-iptcExt:DigitalSourceType = compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia
Date processed	When we produced the image	EXIF:ModifyDate, XMP:ModifyDate
Content Credentials	Signed proof of who made it, what was done, and the source photo	C2PA manifest (c2pa.opened / c2pa.edited / c2pa.placed actions, original as an inputTo ingredient)
No-AI-training notice	A request that the image not be used to train generative AI	XMP-plus:DataMining = Prohibited; C2PA training/data-mining set to not allowed
Asset reference	An opaque ID we can trace back to the source image	XMP-iptcExt:DigitalImageGUID

Your copyright and credits

We are careful to protect your rights, not claim them:

• We never overwrite your copyright. If your original upload already has a caption, author/byline or copyright notice, we preserve it and add our AI disclosure alongside — we don't replace it.

• You are credited as the author. In the Content Credentials, Autoenhance is recorded only as the editing tool. Your authorship and copyright (read from your original file) are carried through as the author of the photo.

• We add an AI-training opt-out so your images are marked as not permitted for generative-AI training or data-mining.

• We protect privacy. GPS and location data from the original file is deliberately removed from exports, so property locations aren't leaked.

How to verify

Anyone — you, your client, or a regulator — can check the disclosures:

• Content Credentials (recommended). Open the image with a Content Credentials inspector such as the Content Authenticity Initiative's Verify tool or Adobe's Content Credentials. It shows that Autoenhance produced the image, what was done, and whether it has been altered since.

• Metadata viewers. Any metadata tool reveals the embedded tags. For developers, ExifTool is the quickest check:

exiftool -G1 enhanced.jpg
# Look for:
#   Software                 : Autoenhance/5.0
#   DigitalSourceType        : https://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/digitalsourcetype/compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia
#   UserComment              : AI Modified Image by Autoenhance.ai ...
#   DataMining               : Prohibited

For developers and compliance teams

A few implementation details worth knowing:

• Standards. We follow C2PA / Content Credentials, and the IPTC Photo Metadata digitalSourceType controlled vocabulary. The disclosure is written across EXIF, IPTC and XMP for maximum compatibility.

• Formats. Disclosures are embedded in JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF and JPEG XL exports.

• Only AI outputs are labelled. Disclosure is applied when you download an AI-produced image (enhanced or restaged). Downloading your original, unedited image is never labelled as AI-altered.

• Provenance chain. The original photo is recorded as an input to the edit (an inputTo ingredient), so the credential links the original capture to the enhanced result.

• Applied at export, always current. Disclosures are added when an image is downloaded, so improvements to our disclosure automatically apply to new and existing images the next time they're fetched.

Quick checklist

• Visible label? Add ?visible_disclosure=true when downloading.

• Hidden disclosure + Content Credentials? Automatic on every AI output.

• Verify? Use contentcredentials.org/verify or exiftool.

• Your copyright? Preserved, you're credited as author, and marked not for AI training.