Photoshop Content Credentials and the AI Label

When Photoshop attaches Content Credentials

Photoshop appends Content Credentials automatically when an image exported as PNG or JPEG, or saved with Save As, has been edited with Generative Fill or Generative Expand. It also applies when a tool that can optionally use generative AI — the Remove tool, or Crop filling new canvas — did so.

The credential describes the document's history, not a layer. It stays even if you later delete the generated pixels, because it records that a generative feature was used, not what is left of it. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and LinkedIn all read it on upload.

Adobe's terms on removing it

Adobe's Generative AI terms are direct: users "must not remove or alter any watermarks or Content Authenticity Initiative metadata (e.g., Content Credentials) that may be generated with the Output, or otherwise attempt to mislead others about the origin of the Output."

So the tool on this page checks rather than removes. Stripping the credential from a generatively edited export would break the terms of the software that made it — and it would not be needed, because the label can be avoided before it is ever written.

Retouch without writing a credential

Most of what photographers use Generative Fill for has a non-generative equivalent that Photoshop has had for years, and those tools do not attach an AI credential.

• Remove tool — set its mode to Generative AI Off in the options bar. It then uses Content-Aware Fill instead of a generative model. Auto may choose generative AI on its own.
• Content-Aware Fill, the Spot Healing Brush, the Healing Brush and the Patch tool for distractions, dust and power lines.
• Crop with Content-Aware fill rather than Generative Expand when extending a background.
• If a document already went through a generative edit, start again from the original rather than undoing the edit: the credential follows the document's history.

Check the export before you post

Load the exported JPEG or PNG above. The checker reads the file in your browser and shows whether it carries a C2PA manifest, an IPTC AI declaration or a generator name — the things Instagram reads — without changing anything.

Photoshop users have reported credentials on exports where no generative feature was used. If the checker shows a credential describing AI use you did not make, that is a fault worth reporting to Adobe, with the file, rather than something to guess about.