How to tell if an image was made with Adobe Firefly

What Adobe Firefly writes into the file

C2PA (Content Credentials) is a signed provenance record in the file, IPTC Digital Source Type a metadata field on how the image was made, for example trainedAlgorithmicMedia for fully AI-generated images. An invisible watermark sits in the pixels, and only the vendor can read it.

How to check a Adobe Firefly image

1. Drag the original file from Adobe Firefly into the box above. It is read in your browser, not uploaded. Screenshots and copies from stores or social networks usually no longer carry the data.
2. The checker then shows program, certificate, source type and actions under “Content Credentials (C2PA)”.
3. For Generative Fill, check the exported file, not the Photoshop working file.
4. Our tool does not verify the signature. contentcredentials.org/verify from the Content Authenticity Initiative does.

More detail in the Content Credentials viewer and AI image checker.

The checker is not an AI detector. It only shows what the file says. An empty result does not prove a real photo, not least because providers of AI systems placed on the market before 2 August 2026 have until 2 December 2026 to add machine-readable marking (Article 111(4) AI Act).

What survives uploads and edits

No watermark in the pixels is documented for Firefly, so the record depends on the metadata. According to the Content Authenticity Initiative, metadata of any kind can be removed deliberately or accidentally. A screenshot, an export without C2PA support or an upload that discards metadata makes the record disappear.

As a remedy, the initiative describes “Durable Content Credentials”, where a watermark or a fingerprint of the image points to a copy of the record stored online.

Labelling duty in your store under the EU AI Act

If you use Adobe Firefly to create or edit images for your own store, you are a deployer, even when an agency or an employee works on your instructions (Article 3(4) AI Act, Commission guidelines para. 12, 14). If the image is a deep fake, meaning realistic and falsely appearing authentic, you have had to label it visibly since 2 August 2026 (Article 50(4) AI Act). The labelling check tells you whether that applies, and the guide to the labelling duty explains the rules.

The traces in the table do not replace that label, because people cannot see them straight away (guidelines para. 117). Still, keep them in the file, as the guidelines recommend. They document where the image came from.

Firefly and Generative Fill often produce partial edits in a store. Filling in edges counts as standard editing under the guidelines (para. 92), and so does removing a passer-by in the background. An edit to the product itself is different. A scratch removed with AI shows the product better than it is.

How Adobe Firefly labels its own output

Adobe relies on Content Credentials and leads the Content Authenticity Initiative, which builds tools for the standard. Adobe compares the records to a nutrition label for digital content. It documents no visible mark on Firefly images.