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ISO/IEC 23888-6 (Media authenticity and provenance indication) is scoped to system-level media authentication across the entire lifecycle — authoring, creation, production, editing, storage, delivery, playback — on MPEG Systems technologies. CfP approved by WG 2 at MPEG 155; responses due as input contributions to MPEG 157 (Brisbane) on 13 January 2027, then CD at 158, DIS at 159, FDIS early 2028. A contribution accepted in January has about a year of drafting influence before the text sets. WHY THIS IS NOT ALREADY COVERED. WAI's provenance ingest is authoring-side manifest provenance — who made an asset and how, bound by hash. That is a different layer from a delivery-and-playback authenticity specification. 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. WHAT WAI HAS THAT THE REQUIREMENTS SPACE DOES NOT. Two positions absent from every provenance standard in the survey, both sitting inside a lifecycle-scoped authenticity spec: 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), and determinism tiers separating byte-exact reconstruction from approximate re-rendering (a hard hash over rendered output is only meaningful when the reconstruction is pinned). Both map to the delivery and playback stages an authoring manifest never reaches. THE ASYMMETRY. The downside of silence 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 which one is decided by whether 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. Deliberately a research document rather than an extension. There is no bitstream, no format and no capability string to register — the correct near-term action is requirement-mapping plus a membership path, and §6 states plainly that this claims no contribution, no membership, and no endorsement. Submitting requires SC 29 national-body membership, which is an organisational decision with a lead time against a fixed date. Ingest queue item 13 (#80 §6.5). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
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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, 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.