wai/research/mpeg-ai-part6-mapping.md

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+# MPEG-AI Part 6 — requirement mapping and alignment
+
+> A preparation document, not a submission and not a normative extension. It maps
+> what WAI already specifies onto the requirements of an open Call for Proposals,
+> so the tree can be aligned *against* that work rather than diverge from it by
+> default. Submitting an input contribution requires SC 29 national-body
+> membership; **nothing here should be planned around an assumed submission.**
+
+## 1. The work item
+
+**ISO/IEC 23888-6** — *Information technology — Artificial intelligence for
+multimedia — Part 6: Media authenticity and provenance indication.* Carried as an
+ISO **PWI** project record. The Call for Proposals was approved by **WG 2** at
+MPEG 155.
+
+| milestone | when |
+|---|---|
+| CfP responses, as input contributions to MPEG 157 (Brisbane) | **13 January 2027** |
+| CD / CDAM | MPEG 158 |
+| DIS / DAM | MPEG 159 |
+| FDIS / FDAM | early 2028 |
+
+Scope, as published: system-level media authentication across the **entire
+lifecycle** — authoring, creation, production, editing, storage, delivery and
+playback — built on MPEG Systems technologies. Stage is
+exploration/requirements; there is **no working draft**, no bitstream, no format
+and no capability string to register. A contribution accepted in January 2027 has
+roughly a year of drafting influence before the text sets.
+
+## 2. Why this is not already covered by WAI's provenance ingest
+
+WAI's existing provenance work is **authoring-side manifest provenance** — a
+manifest asserting who made an asset and how, bound to it by hash. That is a
+different layer from a **systems-layer delivery-and-playback authenticity
+specification**, which is what this work item is scoped to.
+
+The two are complementary, and treating the existing ingest as coverage would be
+a category error: an authoring manifest says what happened before distribution;
+this work item is about what can be asserted and checked *during* it.
+
+## 3. What WAI has that the requirements space does not
+
+Two positions in this tree are absent from every provenance standard surveyed in
+[2030-transport-landscape](2030-transport-landscape.md), and both sit squarely
+inside a lifecycle-scoped authenticity specification:
+
+**Per-object measured energy with a declared acquisition class.** Provenance
+standards record *what was done and by whom*. None records *what it cost, as
+measured, with the provenance of the measurement stated*. WAI's binding is
+per-object, carries `HwShunt` / `ModelBased` / `Estimator`, and refuses to
+publish a figure from a failed measurement. Nothing else in the surveyed field
+binds a measured physical quantity to a media object under signature.
+
+**Determinism tiers separating byte-exact reconstruction from approximate
+re-rendering.** Authenticity over generated or reconstructed media needs a
+statement of *what reproduction means* for the object in question. A hard hash
+over rendered output is only meaningful when the reconstruction is pinned; WAI
+says when it is, and — since the tier fix — says that the tier covers what the
+sink emits rather than the decode alone.
+
+These map onto lifecycle requirements at the delivery and playback stages, which
+are exactly the stages an authoring-side manifest does not reach.
+
+## 4. Alignment actions, in order of cost
+
+1. **Specify against the requirements, not around them.** As WAI's provenance,
+   energy and determinism extensions are revised, state how each satisfies or
+   declines a published requirement. This costs nothing now and is the difference
+   between a profile and an alternative later.
+2. **Keep the vocabulary reconcilable.** Where this tree names a concept the work
+   item also names, prefer their term or state the mapping. Two vocabularies for
+   one property is the failure mode already recorded for energy acquisition
+   classes.
+3. **Establish a membership path** if a contribution is wanted. This is an
+   organisational decision with a lead time, and the deadline is fixed.
+
+## 5. The asymmetry that makes silence expensive
+
+The downside of doing nothing is not neutral. If this lands as **the**
+systems-layer provenance format, WAI is either a profile of it or an alternative
+to it, and that is decided by whether the alignment work happened — not by
+whether a contribution was submitted.
+
+Alignment is cheap and reversible. Being an alternative to a ratified
+systems-layer standard is neither.
+
+## 6. What this document does not claim
+
+- It does **not** assert that a contribution will be made, or that membership
+  exists.
+- It does **not** treat the CfP requirements as final; the stage is
+  exploration/requirements and requirements move.
+- It does **not** describe WAI's mechanisms as adopted by, aligned with, or
+  endorsed by that work item. They are not. This is preparation for a
+  conversation that has not happened.