Apple is working on “Apple Reference Image”, a photo provenance system that will allow you to check whether an image was captured with an iPhone. References to this feature were found in a privacy statement included in iOS 27 beta 5, but it is not yet available.
According to the text, there will be a “Reference” mode option in the Camera app that users can select. Using this mode will embed provenance data into the image metadata.
Images captured with an opt-in reference mode can be authenticated to confirm that they were taken with an iPhone. Authentication is accomplished by tapping the reference badge on the image, which sends the raw image, sensor signatures, capture period, and unique sensor hardware identifiers to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute (PCC) servers. PCC uses the information to determine whether the camera captured the photo, assigns it a unique identifier, and then returns an authenticated version to the user’s device.
When authenticating a photo, Apple receives the sensor data, a hash, and the evaluation results, but not the raw photo. Apple may refuse to authenticate images from a sensor that may be compromised and retroactively revoke past authentications of a sensor.
Authenticated photos can be viewed on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac, and the Reference badge can also be clicked on a Mac. Images must be captured in Apple’s specific Reference mode to be authenticated, which suggests this is a feature aimed at professional photographers, journalists, and anyone else who needs to verify images. There may also be a video component, since Apple’s disclosure mentions “photos or videos” and “uncropped footage.”
Reference mode offers physical proof that an image was captured with a physical camera sensor, which is useful in an age where AI can generate realistic images. AI images are often watermarked or tagged via metadata to ensure they can be identified as fake, including images from Image Playground.
Camera makers like Leica, Sony, and Nikon use C2PA content credentials for authentication, and Google has also adopted them for the Pixel 10 line. Apple’s authentication system appears to serve a similar purpose.
