In a digital world saturated with manipulated media and synthetic imagery, trust is no longer a given. Photojournalist David Butow has spent his career documenting real events — from the war in Iraq to protests in Washington — and he’s now at the forefront of a growing movement: making digital images verifiable at the source.

In episode 11 of Exponential, we explore the promise and friction of C2PA, an emerging standard for content provenance that embeds cryptographic proof directly into digital files.