Who is it for?

TransparentMeta is designed for anyone involved in the creation, distribution, or management of AI-generated audio. This includes developers, platforms, content creators, and organizations who want to ensure transparency, comply with emerging AI regulations, and build trust with their users.

What problem does it solve?

In an era where AI-generated audio content—such as synthetic voices, deepfake music, or AI-composed soundtracks—is increasingly pervasive, it becomes challenging to distinguish authentic human-created audio from AI-generated material.

TransparentMeta tackles this problem by providing a trustworthy way to:

- Embed verifiable metadata into audio files that proves whether they are AI-generated.

- Helps companies comply with AI Transparency legislation.

- Cryptographically sign this metadata, to ensure whether data has been tampered with post signing.

- Enable regulators, platforms, and listeners to verify the origin and nature of audio content confidently.

How does it work?

TransparentMeta writes metadata into an audio file with a cryptographic seal. This allows a third party to read the provenance of an audio file. If the audio metadata has been tampered with post-generation, this seal will be broken and its provenance can be called into question.  

Default metadata fields include key transparency fields required for compliance with international regulations as well as optional IP and copyright identifiers. This data can then be read and decoded using TransparentMeta on the reading end. 

To securely embed transparency metadata into audio files, TransparentMeta relies on cryptographic signing. This requires generating a pair of cryptographic keys:

- A private key used to sign metadata before embedding it into audio files.

- A corresponding public key used to verify the authenticity of the signed metadata.

For most users of TransparentMeta, the primary task is writing metadata (i.e., signing with the private key). Verification of metadata is often done downstream by platforms or services. To simplify this process, Transparent Audio plans to provide a centralized verification service. That said, users retain the freedom to generate and manage their own private/public key pairs if preferred.

Key management best practices

- The private key must be kept secret and stored securely, as it is used to sign all metadata. Loss or compromise of the private key could allow malicious actors to generate forged metadata.

- The public key is meant to be shared with anyone who needs to verify metadata authenticity, such as platforms, regulators, or consumers.